


Love, Like Ghosts

by Eldritchhorrors



Category: Star Trek (2009)
Genre: Academy Fic, Angst, Awesome, Canon Compliant, Coming of Age, Drama, Explicit Language, Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, Love, Love Triangle, M/M, Philosophy, Psychological Drama, Psychological Trauma, Resolved Sexual Tension, Romance, Rough Sex, Sex, Technology, Trauma, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-26
Updated: 2011-01-26
Packaged: 2017-10-15 02:29:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 64,503
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/156093
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eldritchhorrors/pseuds/Eldritchhorrors
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is several stories, not just the story of Jim & Bones' epic romance.</p><p>Jim's story. "Most would think defeating the Narada was my greatest triumph, but those closest to me know the truth. The Narada was a distant third. My last Kobayashi Maru comes in second-- and not for the reasons you'd think. The first, well..."</p><p>Chris's story. "I reached a certain age and thought I knew exactly who I was and what I wanted out of life. Then I walked into an Iowa bar and realized I wasn't the person I thought I knew. Not even close..."</p><p>Leonard's story. "You know that story? the one where Pike meets Kirk and there's mentoring and bonding and they tiptoe through the tulips into happily ever? Well, this ain't it. Dipshit."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Love, Like Ghosts

**Author's Note:**

> My thanks to my betas. Blcwriter, Lindmere, Zauzat, Sangueuk, and Janice Lester. And to my readers, I love you all.

**Chapter 1**

 **  
_  
My cock doesn't talk politics.  ~Stephal Sachs_   
**

 

 

 

“Ouch.”

Jim had managed to sober up a bit in the few hours since the fight and subsequent reaming from Pike, but it didn’t do anything to improve his mood. Moping in the bar parking lot under a shabby light with only a bike for company probably wasn’t so shit hot of a decision either.

“Fucking Cupcake.” He kicked at the gravel and winced, because everything fucking hurt. A shoulder roll met with resistance so he put more pressure on the rag that was halfway up his nostrils instead, tilting his head back to look at the barely lightening sky as much as stop the bleeding. He licked at his swollen lip, tasting blood and something like a bar rag. Definitely smelled like a bar rag.

Sexy as all get out, Kirk. It was something of a joke around here that he liked pain. Untrue. He liked the fighting. The aftermath- not so much.

“Fucking Pike.”

Pike. Now there was something to fume about. Starfleet big shot. Calling him son. Acting like he knew about James T. Kirk, when the truth was that nobody knew dick about Jim Kirk, except for his record and the fact that he can’t keep it in his pants. And Jim liked it that way.

“Fuck Pike.” And his spit-slick hard sell shit. Genius level. Repeat offender. Join Starfleet so we can all sing songs of solidarity, Jim. Kum Bai Yah, Jim. We’ll just gloss over the fact that you’ll never pass the psychological evaluation, Jim. Yeah, fuck Pike.

Jim tentatively removed the rag from his face and looked at it, trying to discern if the bleeding had stopped or slowed or something. He tossed the mix of blood and motor lubricant to the side in revulsion, wishing, not for the first time, that he still smoked.

His hand went to his pocket instead, pulling out a set of old-fashioned digital keys. He tossed them in his hand, watching the chain catch the light.

Yeah, he was pissed. "Your father was captain of a starship for twelve minutes. He saved eight hundred lives, including your mother's and yours. I dare you to do better." Who pulls that kind of shit out of their ass at a moment’s notice?

That bastard. Like he had a right.

He stood up with a groan, arching his back to get it to crack, and shifted uncomfortably as the feeling returned to his ass. But it wasn't like the cycle was going to do it any favors, anyway. Still scowling at the keys as if they offended him, Jim swung a leg up and straddled the bike.

Fucking Pike and his fucking cools lines. And everything.

The key stabbed into the ignition viciously; the touch pad activating the motor and the data screen, which had the time.

He could make it to the shuttle on time.

As he ramped up the speed to enter the highway, hugging the bars in a way that made his ribs protest, he winced again, but this time it had nothing to do with physical pain.

Hopefully, the ride would give him enough time to figure out something better to say than “You whistle really loud.”

***

A few hours later, he was almost giddy. He was the shit. Do it in three.

Awesome.

They were exiting the ship. Him and his new friend, whatever, but they were a little wobbly on bourbon legs; well, him more wobbly from pain and the start of a hangover, and they were kind of falling against each other on the way out. He saw Pike at the entrance, greeting people- like a goddamn flight attendant. Better uniform, though.

Fucking Pike.

Show him, anyway. Jim smirked at Pike over a few people’s heads and reveled in the way Pike’s eyes narrowed in calculation. Pike was greeting the others by rote, but he was looking at Jim. Kinda pissy too. That’s right old man. You don’t know what you let yourself in for.

They shuffled closer, then they were there, and Pike said something to Johnny or Lenny or- fuck, Bones, then nodded at him, because he’s James T. Fucking Kirk, never mind that he nodded at everyone else too.

“Cadet Kirk.”

“Old man.”

Pike stiffened a bit, and his eyes crinkled in that fucking way he had, which made Kirk’s day.

“I haven’t signed those slavery papers yet.” Then he breezed by, making sure to pinch Pike on his still firm ass. Jim resisted the urge to look over his shoulder to see the expression on Pike’s face. It was enough that he could feel eyes bore into the back of his neck as they half trotted, half scrambled down the- was it a gangplank?

His own laugh made him stumble, so he slung his arm over Bone’s shoulder to steady himself, almost pulling them both down.

“Jeezus, kid.” Bone’s whiskey sour breath sighed against his cheek like fine grit sandpaper. “Don’t try to fucking kill me this early.”

“Doing a fine job of it on your own.” Poor bastard. Sad sack with a bitch and a kid. Smart though.

Bone’s just made a snorting sound of derision.

“So. I guess you usually top, right? Because of the kid and all.”

“Jeezus, Kid!”

Jim laughed all the way into the welcome center, Bones sputtering as he was half-dragged along in his wake.

He could still feel Pike’s eyes on him.

It was good to be Jim.

***

See, it went down like this. After a month of acclimatization, orientation, introductions to, physical inspections of and brain shrinking (which he was able to champion through like the bullshittingest of bullshitters that ever bullshit), he was assigned his advisor, and it was just not on. Feeble and wet, with a droning voice that hemmed and hawed at him until he thought he would gouge out his own eardrums just for some fucking relief. The guy must have reached captain by being a sycophantic ring-knocker, or giving a gold star blow job. Jim got up in the middle of the conversation, said a quick no thanks, and left, almost rejoicing in the mark that would surely go down in his record.

Later, he was kind of put out at the look of surprise on Pike’s face when he slid into the chair before his desk and grinned. Thankfully, the surprise quickly morphed into irritation, and that was loads better.

“How the hell did I become your advisor? Last time I checked, you-“

“Checking up on me? You really do care.” Jim swung back and forth again in the swivel chair, quite sure that it would drive Pike up a wall.

“I’ve taken up an interest in your career track. Now answer the question.”

“Your secretary has a thing for blue eyes and a sob story.” He batted his lashes. “Who am I to deny him what he wants?”

Pike huffed.

“Keep your shirt on. And don’t get him in trouble. If he hadn’t made the change I would have found another way. What can I say? I’m irresistible.”

“That’s not what I’ve been told.” Pike was clearly not comfortable with the direction this conversation was taking. Crazy awesome.

“Checking up on my love life too?”

Pike’s mouth firmed into a line of distaste. “Making sure you keep out of trouble. And quality-wise, there is a far cry between what you hit on and what you go home with.”

“Ouch.”

“Is there a reason for this visit, kid? Or are you just wasting my time?

Jim stopped swiveling and leaned forward on his elbows, suddenly intent. “Maybe I just wanted to see if you had a thing for blue eyes and sob stories too.”

Pike rolled his eyes, then leaned back in his chair, pinching the bridge of his nose. “I am an old man, which means too old for this shit. Get to the point cadet.”

“I want an accelerated command track.”

Pike opened his eyes to see Kirk looking at him with complete seriousness. Christ almighty.

“You sure about that? It’s a tough thing to do. No shame in taking the full four years.”

“I can do it. I just need advisor approval.”

And Pike thought: Maybe he can.

The resulting conversation lasted about half an hour, but it was probably the most surreal of Jim’s life. Starfleet command. What the hell was he thinking?

“Kid, I don’t know what’s going on in that crazy head of yours, but if you keep this up, you’ll be Captain before I can blink, and I- well, I’ll be full grey.”

Kirks’ smirk was just this side of lecherous as he said, “Then it’s a good thing I have the hots for older men, isn’t it?”

“Get out of here. I’ll have the paperwork sent to you.”

Jim sighed in relief, and this time his smile was genuine. “Thanks old man.”

Pike stood up, trying to look severe, and Kirk followed his example. “Show some decorum and respect, Cadet Kirk. I am your commanding officer. It’s Captain Pike.”

Kirk stood at attention. “Captain Pike.”

“Dismissed Cadet.”

Jim turned and strolled to the door. As he was leaving, Pike could have sworn he heard him mutter “Kinky.”

Pike sat down, hunched over his desk and tried to rub away the headache encroaching on his temples. Then he reached for the communicator and pressed a button.

“Stephen! Get your ass in here.”

He had a secretary to throttle.

***

It’s a good idea to keep tabs on what Kirk is up to. Pike doesn’t actually have spies, nothing so organized. He just has different people in different places that will give him a heads up on Kirk’s status before they give a heads up to Starfleet security. Its not exactly regs, but he’s not exactly a by the regs sort of guy, at least, not when it doesn’t suit his purpose. Starfleet calls it a pain in the ass. He calls it pragmatism.

It’s not really much of a surprise when he gets a call a week after reaming his secretary, but he had hoped the boy could hold out for longer. “Stupid brawling bastard.”

He’s too tired and rumpled from bed to care about the uniform, so he grabs some jeans and a pullover after rubbing the sleep from his eyes. He was going to a dive anyway. Probably a good idea to ditch the uniform, even if he feels like it’s sacrificing some little amount of authority in front of Kirk.

Pike snorts at the thought. As if the uniform impresses the little shit.

He’s out the door and in the car in a matter of minutes, and if he wasn’t already mad, he would be now, because he’s going to have to find someplace to park this damned thing and the bars haven’t even let out yet.

***

When he finally finds Kirk, he’s next to the bar, sitting on the concrete and leaning against the brick façade as he nurses a tender cheek, one that’s just beginning to flower into a nasty bruise. The flickering old-fashioned neon is makes Kirk’s pout look almost surreal. His friend is hovering near him, fidgety, and keeps looking at him with spasming hands as if he wants to do something. Pike can’t tell if he wants to help him or kill him. He can sympathize with both.

“Son.”

Kirk looks up, confused, as does his friend. It takes them a moment to realize who is speaking to them, but Kirk’s friend is the only one to straighten up into some drunken semblance of attention. Kirk smirks, and regrets it instantly as the movement of his cheek telegraphs pain.

“Well, shit.” The drawl is southern fried and slurred.

Pike looks at Kirk’s friend, McCoy, he thinks- promising med student. “Yeah. That’s about right.”

Kirk just slumps back and groans.

“Both of you stay right here. You won’t like it if I have to track your asses down. I’m going to go in and settle up. Smooth some things over. And you better believe that I don’t like kissing bartender ass on your behalf.”

Despite himself, McCoy actually smiles when Pike kicks Kirk in the leg before entering the bar.

***

The twenty minutes Pike took in the bar were uncomfortable, to say the least. Most of it was a tense, accusatory silence, until Bones just couldn’t keep the question from tumbling from his lips.

“Jeezus, Jim. What the hell is a Captain doing cleaning up your goddamn mess? You should be in the brig. Ain’t no way I’m gonna take a hit on my record because you don’t know when to shut that damn fool lip of yours.”

“Eh. I think he likes these damn fool lips. What can I say. I’ve got serious skills.”

“You’ve got serious issues,” Bones said fervently, before taking the flask out of his pocket. “And probably syphilis.” He was about to take a swig when a hand reached out and plucked it from his grip.

“Hey-“ Bones turned to find Pike, calmly spilling the rest of his whiskey onto the pavement before recapping the flask and smacking it against Bones’ chest. Bones took it, looking gobsmacked.

“Well, at least one of your friends has a brain in his head. Too bad he wasn’t using it half an hour ago.”

Pike looked at McCoy. “I called you a cab. I suggest you take it.”

He then turned to Kirk, eyes seething. “Follow me and get in the car.” Jim opened his mouth, but Pike cut in before he could argue, or make a sexual advance. “Shut the fuck up. I’m doing the talking, and you’re doing the listening. If you don’t, I’ll finish your beating then take you to the brig myself. On the charge of being a complete shithead.”

Jim couldn’t stop the small snigger that left his lips. Suddenly Pike was on him, pulling him up, twisting his bloody shirt around his neck, and squeezing, eye to eye and brutally serious.

“Don’t. Test. Me.”

Jim gurgled, then coughed as Pike dropped him like a sack of potatoes. Pike spun on his heel and started to walk away, expecting Kirk to follow. Jim scrambled up, glancing at Pike, then Bones, then back at the movement of Pike’s perfect, perfect ass.

“Uh.” Jim cleared his throat, then tried again. “Uh. Bye Bones.” He launched himself into a painful jog to catch up with Pike.

“Yer an asshole, Jimmy!” Bones yelled at his retreating back.

“Tell me about it tomorrow.” He didn’t know if Bones heard him, and couldn’t bring himself to care. Pike had smelled really, really good.

***

Pike’s car was a low slung little rocket of a thing, black and faceted. He approached the driver door and said, “Chris Pike, double aught two three- passenger.” The car blazed to life with a hum, inner console lighting, headlights on and automatically adjusting, both doors raising with a hydraulic whoosh.

“Oh, nice.”

“Don’t try to butter me up, kid. It’s a car. Get in and hold your tongue.”

Kirk acquiesced, but his expression was mutinous as he adjusted his- five point!- safety harness.

“So would acting your age.”

“I…” Jim started, but trailed off when Pike turned to stare at him. He shivered, and this time it had almost nothing to do with lust.

“So help me, if you don’t let me speak my peace, I’m going to gag you. And believe me, whatever scenario your perverted little mind is coming up with, it isn’t that one. You won’t like it one bit, you childish control freak.”

Kirk’s mouth closed with a snap of teeth that were already fight loosened and aching.

Pike eased the car out of park, merged into traffic and headed down the street. He turned in a direction that Jim knew was the long way to the main campus.

The harness was a little too tight on his sore ribs, but that didn’t stop him from hunkering down lower in the seat, prepared to let Pike’s stupid fucking lecture roll over him. He could shed it like a duck sheds water.

He conveniently ignored the inner voice that asked him why he ended up joining Starfleet in the first place.

“Do you know how many credits I had to shell out back there? Your tab, and then some. You aren’t allowed back.” His fingers started tapping the wheel in agitation as he waited at a light. “I thought, if you joined, you’d stop this candy-ass autodestruct bullshit.”

“You don’t know why I decided to join.”

“Well, you did. And now you’re stuck, so suck it up. I’m sure you’ve had this conversation before, and from more convincing people than me. But I’m not looking for this to be the best lecture about being an idiot fight magnet you’ve ever had. Only the last one.”

Pike took off once more, and Kirk averted his eyes to stare out the window until Pike leaned over and thumped him in the temple. “You make no sense, son. If you can’t fight or fuck, you have no idea what to do with yourself.”

Pike cursed, braking as some guy cut him off in a little yellow two-seater.

“Well,” He glanced over for a moment, “that ends now.”

He paused to let that statement sink in, trying hard not to laugh as Kirk’s frown deepened.

“You think too loud. Yes, it was a fucking ultimatum. Yes, you are going to follow it. I’m not going to piss around with any reverse psychology to jolly you along. I don’t have the time or the patience, and I have more respect for your intellect than that.”

Jim snorted.

“Don’t. I’ve spoken to your professors. You impress the hell out of them when you aren’t driving them to drink. Top of your class, and you aren‘t even working for it yet.” He pointed a steady finger at Jim. “I hesitate to tell you this because you’re already so full of yourself you might as well be fucking your double, but I know you have a brain in there when you choose to let it override your cock.”

They were pulling into the campus now, security waving them through after recognizing Pike.

“But grades and a smile won’t mean a thing if you get drummed out for fighting. You really want that? George Kirk’s son couldn’t hack the pressure, so he got booted? Oh, the hero’s boy had emotional problems, so sad, have to pity him. Or, hey, my personal favorite- that backwoods Iowa redneck is back where he belongs, knee deep in cowshit and corn.”

Jim’s face was carefully blank.

“Be a slag all you want, son. Hell, give Admiral Archer a test drive for all I care. Just channel some of that self-hatred into something a little less likely to screw you over in the long run. It gets old. What may be charming now isn't going to be charming forever. And maybe by then there won't be anyone willing to take a chance on you.”

Kirk seemed to shrink in on himself. There was a tense minute before he spoke. “I’m in the Cochrane dorm. South entrance.”

“I know.”

Kirk gave him a withering glare as they pulled into the long drive leading to student housing. “Fuck. How hard are you watching me? Can I even take a piss without you knowing?”

“Not likely.”

That surprised a laugh out of Kirk, but there wasn’t much humor in it.

Pike pulled up to the curb and hit the kill switch, but didn’t make a move to open the door.

“You’re not the fuck up you like people to think you are, but I’m not going to give you the chance to prove me wrong. So, yeah, I’m keeping an eye on you. Somebody has to.”

Kirk makes a derisive sound in the back of his throat. “So. Should I call you daddy?”

“You’re definitely not that fucked up. Oedipal, more than anything.”

Kirk’s glare could have fried a nacelle.

“You think I don’t know how much you fudged on that psych eval? I invented that dodge. I backdoored my way into your records and laughed my ass off over the horseshit they fell for. Bet you had the doc teary eyed with your heartfelt saccharine crap.” The corner of Pike’s mouth quirked up.

“You are one seriously messed up boy, but you definitely don’t need a father figure, and I think you know that.”

Kirk was silent, in thought for quite a while, and Pike left him to it. He was quietly surprised at how pensive Kirk seemed, brow knit as he chewed on his bottom lip, like he was really mulling over what Pike had said. It left him feeling a little giddy, that maybe some of his advice had penetrated the boy’s thick skull for a change. Probably the first in a while to do so. He was so impressed with himself, he even let it slide when Kirk eventually spoke.

“So, no daddy complex. Does that mean no spankings?”

Pike would have been frustrated, but the question seemed automatic, as if Kirk was on autopilot. He decided to be magnanimous and consider it almost an apology for what the kid couldn’t bring himself to say. To be fair, he had given the wretched little twerp a lot to mull over. Let him have his avoidance.

For now.

He just opened the door and pushed Kirk from the vehicle with a sigh. As much as he would like to spank some sense into the kid, he wasn’t exactly feeling fatherly. And that stung.

When he was back on the road headed for home, he allowed himself a big exhale as he beat his skull against the headrest.

“Christ, Chris. What the hell are you thinking?”

 **Chapter 2**

 **  
_  
"Friendship marks a life even more deeply than love. Love risks degenerating into obsession, friendship is never anything but sharing." — Elie Wiesel_   
**

 

 

The next day Jim is as bright-eyed as a stim allows. He doesn’t have any classes till the afternoon, but he has to study and catch Bones before he gets sucked into whatever foul xeno parasite is demanding his attention at the moment. Being friends with Bones is good for the waistline. He’s never hungry after talking shop.

He leaves his dorm with a sweet bun between his teeth, juggling two PADDs. As an afterthought he slips back in for just a moment, long enough to fold yesterday’s sweaty boxers and slip them into his roommate’s pillowcase. The smug bastard. Teach him to lecture him on late nights when he’s already pissed off and moody and fucking hurt and horny as hell.

Slipping out the front entrance with a wink at the girl manning the desk isn’t flirting, it’s good policy. Cute as all get out, but it’s a bad idea to shit, or fuck, where you eat. Doesn’t mean he can’t look. Should probably make a Do Not Fuck list. People who can make his life hell go at the top.

Captains- probably don’t count.

Jim finally finds Bones as Bones is leaving the cafeteria, already deep into a PADD guaranteed to give nightmares. He’s clean cut and shaven, and hell, that ass, but people are still giving him a wide berth as he walks across the quad. Probably the scowl. And the muttering.

Different strokes and all. Jim thinks it’s sexy. But Bones is at the very top of The List and circled in red.

“Bones!” Jim jogs to catch up, undeterred when Bones just slants him a glare and keeps on walking.

“Bones.” He pulls up to Bones’ side and slows his pace to keep even with the Doctor, who has suddenly picked up his pace as if he just remembered somewhere he needed to be.

“Aw. C’mon. Don’t be like that, Bones, m’boy.”

“Shut up, Kirk. I’m not in the mood.”

“Kirk?” Jim grabbed Bones by the arm, pulling him to a stop while clasping a hand to his chest. “Why Bones, you wound me. What happened to our epic love that was written in the stars? The sonnets you wrote me, comparing me to the- ”

“Kid.” Bones turned, wearing his long-suffering face. “Do you remember our agreement?”

“Yeah. You don’t ask me about that thing, and I don’t ask you about that other thing.” Jim loves a frustrated Bones.

“The other one. I don’t discuss the side effects of Rigellian spores, you don’t engage in histrionics before lunch.”

“That was melodrama. Not histrionics.”

Bone’s deflated, and swiped a palm over his face. “I know what you’re doing. Normally, I’d let you get away with it, but this isn’t anything like normal.” He grabbed Jim’s arm for a change and steered him towards a quiet grassy area between two buildings.

“I don’t really have time for this, I’m meeting someone.”

“Liar. Not even a good one.”

 “I,” Jim sniffed, drawing himself up with offended dignity, “am a champion liar.”

“Only to people who don’t know you. Transparent ass.” Bones pressed on his shoulder, collapsing them both to the grass, where he crossed his legs to settle in for an uncomfortable pow-wow.

“You haven’t known me for that long.”

Bones’ regard was steady. Serious. “I know enough. And I have a degree in psychiatry.”

Jim just stared at the ground glumly and pulled up a blade of grass to shred.

“So. What the hell was that last night?”

Silence.

“Or you gonna let me make shit up? Your sleazy fling with a captain who has a thing for your father? The way you’re sleeping your way to the-“

“Hey!”

“Or are ya going to tell me what the real deal is?”

This time, he pulled up a clump of grass. “I don’t know what it is. He has an interest in my career. He’s the one that recruited me. And my advisor.” Jim wouldn’t meet his eyes.

“But that’s not all, is it?”

“Fuck! I don’t know. He’s on my back like a bad case of hives but when I…I don’t know.”

“Shit.”

“Yeah.”

“S’not a smart place to be getting your dick wet.”

“I know that. I just. I really want it.”

“Jim. Have you ever wanted anything that was good for you?”

The grunt Jim gave was answer enough.

“I think he’s too professional for you. And too grown up. Translate that into not dumb enough to fuck a kid. Even when the kid is advertising it like a hooker. Thank fuck he’s a rational adult.”

“I’m 22.”

“You’re 16 and still thinking with your willie.”

“It’s. It’s not sex.” Kirk shrugged. “Not only.”

Bones put an arm around his shoulder and pulled him in tight.

“S’what I was afraid of.”

“Yeah.”

They lay there for a few moments before Jim gave Bone’s shoulder a squeeze. “So. Does this mean you’re not putting out either? Because, you know, older men-“

Then Bones cuffed him in the head and everything was back to normal.

Relatively.

***

Pike received another call late Friday night. He was out the door in two minutes, hair askew and wearing sandals for fuck’s sake.

Murder was beginning to sound like a fine thing to indulge in.

This bar was a little closer, and a little less townie, but still a mix of both. Luckily, it was late, and the crowd had dwindled to almost nothing, allowing him to park without hiking. It also meant there were less people to see him rumpled and angry, and those that did had on beer goggles.

He stomped up to the place, face set in grim lines as he took in the self-conscious electroluminescent sort of cool that appealed to the desperate and easily led.

“Goddamn sissy-mary cocktails. Frappachino swillers.”

“A-fucking-men.”

Pike stopped and took a closer look at the figure on the curb. Leonard McCoy.

“Dr. McCoy.”

McCoy looked up at him, and quickly stashed his flask in a pocket.

“Yeah. I took care of it.”

“Took care of what?”

McCoy shrugged. “It’s square.”

That fucking brat. Even his insubordination was infectious.

“I didn’t ask whether he was square, cadet, I want to know where the fuck he is.”

The doctor leaned back on his elbows and threw his denim clad legs out into the street, spread like he was sunning himself. “M’ a doctor, not a baby-sitter.” McCoy looked up at him, and suddenly Pike could tell that McCoy wasn’t nearly as drunk as he thought, and not remotely ignorant.

“Go easy on the kid, O.K.?”

McCoy must have decided that he was safe enough, because he pulled the flask back out and took a long draw. He wiped his mouth with his hand before hooking his thumb out and pointing towards a side alley. “S’back there. But you won’t like it none.”

“Thank you, cadet.”

McCoy laughed as Pike walked away. “Yeah. You do that.”

Bones got up and started walking. No need to be at ground zero when the shit went down. Sometimes he missed being a country doc.

***

Pike didn’t know what to expect. Fighting, most certainly. Maybe some maudlin drunken rambling and vomit. But as he picked his way through the narrow alley to the larger area behind the club, the sounds he heard were not those of a street brawl.

When he turned the corner, he stopped. And stared.

Kirk was pinned to the concrete wall, pants undone and falling down his thighs; no underwear. His t-shirt was hitched up over his abs, and exposing one nipple to a hand that was twisting it, pink and hard. A hard body behind him, slightly bigger build than Kirk, dark ash blond hair. A slightly older man. The light wasn’t perfect but Pike could imagine that he was going a little grey at the temples.

And Kirk. Kirk was undulating like a wave, a movement that started at his feet and wound up his body like a snake as the stranger threw his fuck into the boy. Not nearly the finesse the boy’s movements demanded, but Kirk seemed to lap it up, flexing his ass to make the other man groan and speed up to a more brutal rhythm. The sound of flesh upon flesh grew more urgent, and the strokes got longer so that he could see the glistening flesh disappearing into that clenching hole, punctuated by Kirk’s breathless “uh. uh. uh.”

They were getting close, losing that perfect synchronicity as the pure sociopathic drive to come took over. Kirk braced his hands against the wall, pushing back harder and arching his back to trip his prostate just that little bit more. The stranger’s hand groped around to find Kirk’s cock, giving it long strokes to bring him off.

Kirk’s head fell back and he shut his eyes on a moan, only to turn his head to look directly at Pike. His eyes were glassy, and unfocused at first, but they zeroed in on Pike like a fucking hawk. His moan was louder this time, feral and wanting, and he didn’t break eye contact with him- even as he spilled ropes of pearlescent come against the building.

He didn’t break eye contact even as the other man finished with a grunt and pulled out. Or when he crooked his mouth up in a devious smile.

Challenging.   

 Pike turned and walked away calmly. When he got back to the street he was unsurprised to find Doctor McCoy gone.

He made his way to the car and got in, grabbing the steering wheel with white hands, but didn’t make a move to start it for several minutes. When he finally went to start the ignition, he was surprised to find the steering wheel wet; sticky.

He turned his palms over and stared.

Crescents were cut into each hand, bruised and bloodied by his own fingernails.

***

The meeting was held in Pike’s office two days later.

It was tense from the get go. Pike was starched up to the hilt in his dressier uniform, every pin perfectly placed and polished. Not a hair out of alignment. His eyes, though; they showed a bit of tension at the corners.

Jim had thought about dressing sloppy, but Bones had sneered at him and asked him how old he was. Bones- he could be a real pain in the ass. So Jim was in a freshly cleaned and pressed cadet red and his pants that were just a bit too tight, because, c’mon. He was in trouble, not stupid. Maybe big trouble.

He admitted, just to himself, that he was nervous. Maybe that had been a little too much, even for him. He could probably talk his way out of it.

He sat in that ass-hating chair for a minute, which stretched into several minutes, while Pike just looked at him. He knew what Pike was doing. Waiting for him to get antsy and fidget and uncomfortable. And fuck if it wasn’t working. He was the type that needed to do something dammit, and knowing how he was being played just made it worse.

Pike eventually relented when he started drumming his fingers.

“Cadet Kirk. I’m tempted to ask you what you thought you were doing, but that would give you permission to open your mouth. Instead, I’m going to spell out a few possible scenarios, and you are going to nod, yes, or no. You speak, you’re out. Period. Understand?”

This is so not what he had expected. Shit.

“I didn’t ask you to look constipated. I asked you if you understood. Well?”

Kirk nodded.

Pike leaned back in his chair and brought his fingers together under his chin. “At first, I thought it might have been chance timing. The call and the way I found you. That thought only lasted for about five seconds.” Pike raised an eyebrow. “On the right track so far?”

Jim nodded again. Hell.

“Then, I wondered if you were trying to get kicked out. You’ve got a chip on your shoulder the size of Starfleet, and it was possible that you joined just to be able to deliver a big, personal fuck you.” Pike shook his head. “But no. Not your style. Too much planning and not enough stupid bravado. With me?”

Another nod. He was beginning to sweat a little, and these uniforms were damned uncomfortable when they got clammy.

“And then your friend McCoy. He’s the one who put me on the right track.”

Shit. Shit. Shit.

Pike leaned forward. It would have felt intimate, like they were sharing confidences, if the look in his eyes wasn’t so spooky and left him exposed. Goddamn Bones!

“Interesting man, your doctor. Easy to assume he’s just a booze hound. But I checked into him. Top of his class in med school. Degree in psychiatry. Offered tons of research fellowships, awards. Medical glory. A down home good ole boy country doctor. Almost as fucked up as you, though.” Pike smiled. “But you knew all that, didn’t you?”

Kirk stared at the floor.

“Didn’t you?”

Another tight nod.

“I knew somebody else had been looking in to him. I assumed it was you.”

Kirk flinched. He hated giving away more than he needed.

“McCoy.  Cares about you, difficult as that seems. He wanted me to go easy on you for some reason, and I started thinking about why. Only reason I came up with for such a practical man to mother you so is because you’re being a goddamn child. Neediest bastard I’ve ever met.”

Kirk’s eyes narrowed, but Pike’s smile just got broader.

“You wanted me to find you en flagrante. You wanted me to see you fucking so I would view you as a sexual creature. You’re falling back on old comfortable habits because you don’t know how to have a relationship with someone that isn’t only ten minutes long and spent nailing you to a wall.”

Pike was really on a roll, bright-eyed and vibrating as Jim was skewered. “Manipulative little fuck, aren’t you?”

Kirk pursed his mouth, but Pike laughed. “That one was rhetorical, son. Well, tough shit. It isn’t happening here.”

Pike relaxed again, going for something Kirk assumed was supposed to be benevolent. Jackass.

“So you want attention? Fine. I’ll give you attention. You want admiration? Fine. Work for it. And I don’t mean your ass.” Pike shifted his weight against one arm of the chair. “I’ll tell you the truth, you’re shit-hot. But I don’t give a damn about that. You want to impress me? Make something of yourself. And that means no games. You can’t play me like you do everyone else, because I can see it for what it is.”

Pike stopped again, letting the silence stretch taut once more.

“Permission to speak freely, Cadet, but not too freely.”

Jim’s voice didn’t feel like his own, however. “What do you want me to say?”

“Whatever you think that isn’t X-rated.”

“I fucked up. I was stupid, and drunk. What more do you want?”

“I want it not to happen again. But I don’t know if you will stop the fighting completely. So I will settle for you respecting the fact that I have more brains than you give me credit for. You can’t manipulate me with sex. It just won’t happen. I’ve explained to you what I need from you.”

“But that’s not! I mean, I didn’t just…” Fuck. For once, words failed him.

“What? You want me to believe that it would just be no strings sex? No ulterior motive? Christ, that you have a massive hard on for a guy that has done absolutely nothing but get on a soapbox and preach at you from the night we met?”

“I’m telling you, it wasn’t like that.”

“Then what was it like?”

“I just. I. Fuck.” Jim glared at a fray in the carpet. “I don’t know. But it wasn’t like that!”

Pike sighed. “Jesus. You are a child.”

“Fuck you.”

“Look. You need validation. I get that. You need validation, you’ll get validation. Meeting. Here. Every Friday afternoon at four unless I let you know otherwise. We’ll review your progress. And there better be progress.”

“Shit.”

Pike placed a PADD in front of him. “Know what that is?”

Kirk leaned forward to look. “My enlistment.”

“You fucked up. I own your ass. You wanted me? You got me. Just not in the way you envisioned. Meeting this Friday.”

“Is it a naked meeting?”

“Do you want to get molested in a cell?”

“Role-play. I can deal with that.”

“You’ll deal with my boot in your ass if you don’t get out of here right now.”

As Jim left, he cursed the fact that he wore the tight pants. It made for a painful, and obvious, hard-on.

***

After three months of almost angelic behavior, Pike was ready to concede that maybe Kirk had some vestigial form of survival instinct after all. His behavior to his instructors, and Pike himself, was exemplary, at least in public. Privately, the kid was still an ass, but at least he was driven.

They looked over his work every week, dissecting his notes and research. He had Kirk defend his every point until it was rock solid and unassailable. Kirk wasn’t the best with the written work, but that was stylistic and no reflection on his grasp of theory; even his written style was brash. His practical work almost ruined the curve. Every instructor said the same thing: Brilliant mind, analytical thinker, maverick. If they were occasionally tempted to add arrogant to the list, they restrained themselves admirably. After all, some level of arrogance was expected for command.

Sometimes, they played chess instead, while discussing Starfleet in a more general way. He had done similar things with other promising cadets, but had never been so…invested.

And that worried him.

Kirk ended every meeting with a proposition of some sort. It’s not that Pike was tempted to take him up on the offer. It wouldn’t be ethical, and he had no wish to be a notch or a name in a book or whatever the hell sort of thing Kirk liked to keep as a tally. He was even pretty sure that Kirk was only doing it as some sort of perverse ritual, a habit he was disinclined to break.

But it was uncomfortable, and left him a bit restless.

The kid still drank too much, and had obviously found some out-of-the-way shithole to indulge his penchant for fighting, if the occasional bruise was anything to go by. They were a hell of a lot more common than the sanctioned combat classes would indicate, but at least the little snot was learning discretion. A line had been drawn somewhere, one that separated Cadet Kirk: Command Prodigy, from Jim Kirk: Douchebag. It was a sketchy line, at best, but at least it was there.

There were still some problems. A few things were never discussed, even though they were like an elephant in the room. There was no discussion of George Kirk. One brief mention of him was enough to get Jim to clam up. Ditto for Winona, the stepdad, the brother- all of his childhood. If he didn’t know about the Kelvin he would have assumed the kid had popped out of Zeus’ head, fully formed. He tried to lull the kid into talking about it by discussing his own childhood, and the ranch he currently owned, but the kid just smiled at all the right points and laughed when he was supposed to.

He decided not to push it too soon, even though it frustrated him. He didn’t want to make assumptions, but something had left the boy twitchy. Pike had lied a bit about reading Kirk’s psych eval. He had read the public portions, those that were available to upper echelon Starfleet with direct oversight of Kirk, but there were a few areas that were sealed to him with some heavy-duty clearances. Old clearances that pre-dated his recruitment. Worrisome. They should not be in the file of a regular young reprobate.

Instead, he focused on getting the kid involved with other cadets in a way that wasn’t focused on sex, booze or violence. The idea of joining the chess club was shot down with a laugh, but Kirk had finally succumbed to the Xenolinguistics club when Pike had briefed him about their exemplary field study program. In the spring he would be off planet for a club-sponsored conference. He was also excelling in his hand-to-hand course, and was making noise about becoming a TA.

On the whole, James T. Kirk was becoming a model cadet. Pike was just waiting for the other shoe to drop. When it did, it wasn’t in the way he expected.

This time, he got the call at nine in the morning, interrupting a conference with a homesick cadet who was waffling on whether to continue. Pike had just finished explaining why that was a bad idea when the intercom buzzed.

“Starfleet Medical, line one. They said it’s important.”

He dismissed the cadet before pulling up the vid screen. When the image came online, he was surprised.

“Dr. McCoy. What can I do for you?”

The man looked like shit, and his entire face was bundled up in an unhappy frown. “Captain Pike, you might want to come down here. Our boy ain’t doing too good.”

Pike’s back straightened. “What happened?”

“Accident. Engineering. Near as I can tell from listening to the reports from the idiots he was with, it wasn’t his fault. He was just the closest one to the console as it overloaded. He threw himself over two other cadets, so his back got the brunt of it. It’s pretty bad, but he should make a full recovery. I’m not the doc in charge, but his treatment is solid. They’ve got him on some aggressive dermal and sub-dermal regenerators and the one med he isn’t allergic to. Some lacerations, particularly to the glutes, thighs and one shoulder blade, but most of them are pretty minor. Only one deep enough to cause nerve damage, but that should fix up too.”

Pike was silent for a moment a he cataloged Kirk’s injuries.

“Any other cadets injured?”

“Just a few cuts and scrapes. One eye injury that ain’t too bad. Nothin’ like Jimmy.”

“Thank you, Dr. McCoy.” Pike’s brow furrowed. “I’m glad you called. But- Why did you call? You know I would have been notified in my news packet later in the day.”

McCoy smiled in that particular way he had that Pike was only now beginning to associate with unpleasantness. “Just thought you might be interested, sir.  In a purely academic way, of course.”

Damn the brat.

“And.” Pike gave a start as McCoy’s expression promptly fell and he ran a shaky hand through already mussed hair. “He listed you on his emergency contact information sheet. Only you and me.”

“Oh, hell.”

“Yeah. Thought so too. That boy can pull your guts out through your throat.” McCoy gave him a level look. “So, am I gonna be seeing you sometime soon?”

Pike shied away from that look, and cursed the fact that he hadn’t just gone for an audio transmission. “I’ll have to check with my secretary.”

Pike still didn’t look back at the screen, but he could hear McCoy’s smile in his voice, as lazy as the Mississippi. “Look forward to seeing you, Captain Pike. McCoy out.”

The screen dimmed and he was alone.

Fuck.

He stalked out of the office, not even bothering with the intercom. “Steve, I have an emergency. Reschedule everything, I’ll be incommunicado.”

“But sir-“

“Do it.”

***

Hate was a strong word, but it had, in the past, been used to describe his reaction to Starfleet medical. Loathing might be more apt.

Nothing good ever came of being there, unless you were a doctor.

They had put Kirk in the burn unit. He wasn’t technically supposed to be able to enter, but being Captain had its perks, and one of them was intimidating the hell out of people with less rank and not enough sense to realize that medical trumped command in this little game of Rochambeau. He was still made to enter a decontamination unit and spread a sterilizer on his hands.

Jim was at the end of a quiet hallway, but as he approached the half-open door, he heard voices. He quieted his steps and leaned into the doorjamb, peering into the room, but not indicating his presence.

The lights were at half power, and the curtains were drawn. Kirk lay on his stomach. His back and part of his glutes were covered in a slick looking chitenous wrap that formed itself to the flesh underneath. The bioskin pulsed in several areas with a faint bluish light as the regenerators did their work. The rest of his ass and the backs of his thighs and calves showed evidence of being abraded, but the wounds were now fresh and shiny pink. A patch of his hair at the back of his head had been shaved away, but that was also freshly healed and tender looking.

Kirk was awake, head propped up, chin resting on a half-moon pillow that would allow him to breathe face down. Probably has one at home, Pike thought, uncharitably.

Dr. McCoy had pulled up a chair to the bed and was holding Kirk’s hand. “Nother stupid stunt like that might actually get you killed.”

It sounded like Kirk tried for a laugh, but it was aborted in favor of a groan. “Din mean to. S’just I’m s’posed to command. S’ command thing.”

McCoy squeezed the hand in his. “ I don’t have to tell you how fucked up that is. Someone’s fed you a line of bullshit your whole life. Most Captains stay safe and cozy in their little captain’s chairs until their asses start to spread. When the ass spreads enough, they become Admiral. Everyone else is the cannon fodder, kid. All those jokes about red shirts came from somewhere.”

“I was gonna get hit ‘nyway.”

“Bullpucky. I talked to that Andorian guy in your class. Had those dillybobbers on his head going crazy when he talked about James T. Kirk selflessly throwing himself in the way. He said you were so fast to react you could have gotten away from the majority of the blast. I think you have a new fan.”

“S’good. Like blue. An antne- antna- antennn- shit.”

McCoy chuckled. “I bet you do.”

Suddenly, one of the blue lights on Kirk’s shoulder began to flutter quickly, and a thready whine built in Kirk’s throat as the rest of his body went taut. The hand clasping McCoy’s clenched down till the knuckles were white, and it must have hurt like a sonofabitch, but McCoy still held on tight.

“It’s going to be OK, Jim. I wish I could knock you out, but I don’t have anything that won’t react with the other drugs in your system.” McCoy brought his other hand up to softly stroke the hand he was holding. “Two more hours. Just two more, then I can put you under. You’re doing really well.”

McCoy kept repeating variations on this theme until the fluttering blue light stabilized and Kirk’s body went slack with relief.

“Shit,” Kirk panted, keeping his breath shallow. “How many more of those?”

“I don’t know. A few.”

“Fuck.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don be. Did it to m’self.”

“Ah, shit. Don’t listen to me. When I get worried, I bitch. It wasn’t your fault. You did good. Just wish there was more I could do.”

“Could kiss it better.”

McCoy laughed. “Sure thing, kid.”

Kirk groaned and turned his head slightly to look at McCoy. The corners of his lips turned up just a bit, and the look in his eyes was fond. It was the most genuine look Pike had ever seen on the boy’s face, and it made his stomach ache.

“Luv you, Bones.”

McCoy actually smiled, half his mouth turned up, cheek dimpled. “Love you too, ya little shit.”

“S’cause I’m loveable.”

“If you say so.”

“And awesome.”

“Huh.”

“Hey Bones?”

“Yeah?”

“Don’t tell Pike about this, please?”

McCoy froze for a moment, but Kirk was probably too drugged up to notice. “Why not.”

“You c’n tell him about the other cadets n’ bout me bein’ awesome an ev’rythin’. Just- don’t tell him about all this. Don’t wanna-“

“Whatever you want, kid. You got it.” McCoy gave another squeeze to Jim’s hand, but his attention wasn’t on Kirk. He was looking straight at Pike.

“S’good. Great.”

“Yeah. Great.”

Pike clenched his jaw, gave McCoy a terse nod, then turned to leave just as a pulsing blue light began to ratchet up once more. The steady wail of pain that followed him down the hall crawled underneath his skin like an insect. It seemed like he did a lot of walking away when it came to Kirk.

Instead of going back to the office, he decided to hit the gym.

He felt like damaging someone.

  
 **  
Chapter 3**

 ****

 **  
_The tragedy of sexual intercourse is the perpetual virginity of the soul.  ~William B. Yeats_   
**

 

 

He managed to keep everything professional between them for several months. Kirk needed post-regeneration muscle therapy, particularly in his left shoulder, and wasn’t able to make the off-planet conference. Pike mollified him by allowing him entrance into a summer symposium on command psychology and diplomacy.

He also personally arranged for the best physical therapist to work with the boy several times a week, and juggled a way for the kid to make up for lost classes in defense during a holiday period, even though he had tested into advanced and was already way ahead of most of his year.

Kirk, like the handful of other cadets on an accelerated track, wasn’t able to take the six weeks of summer downtime allotted to everyone. It didn’t seem like a big deal, since he didn’t really have anywhere to disappear to for the vacation period, but students generally went with a lighter load than usual.

Not Jim Kirk.

Most students would have been close to a psychotic break, but during their Friday appointments he always appeared relaxed and confidant. He maintained the same insane number of hours he had during the fall and spring, plus signed up for extra hand-to hand to get him back into his previous physical conditioning.

And suddenly Pike had a problem.

Because he was teaching that course in tandem with Captain Franz.

“Are you listening to me?” Kirk looked annoyed.

“Does anyone?”

Kirk huffed. “They at least try to pretend. Especially if they want in my pants.”

“I need to speak with you about that.”

The surprise on Kirk’s face only lasted a moment before it dissolved into the smarmiest shit-eating grin Pike had ever seen. “Really? Do tell.” He leaned forward over Pike’s desk.

“Special combat. I’m one of the instructors.”

Kirk leaned back again. “Ah.”

“Now we both know you don’t mean it,” Pike ignored the dubious look on Kirk’s face, ”but I don’t need the shit storm that would result if you say something like that to me during the class. Either I would have to come down hard on you in public and that goes on your record, or I give you a slap on the wrist and it looks like we’re fucking.”

“I behave in public.”

“I know you do, but this is a bit more than the occasional brush in front of others. We’ll be working closely with each other for a good while.”

“I get it.”

“Just- see that you do.”

Pike changed the subject, but he still had reservations.

And when Cadet McCoy came by the office to pick up Kirk for therapy; well, he had reservations about that too.

***

Dead.

Kirk was dead.

He was in a regulation black t-shirt and grey gym shorts, but he must have traded uniforms with someone because the shirt was tight enough across the chest to make out nipples, and the shorts, though well fitting, were worn thin and soft and draped in the front as if presenting the kid’s dick at a fancy buffet.

Pike was lecturing on the advantages of going to the ground in a one-on-one fight, but his attention kept getting pulled back to Kirk every time the little bastard asked for clarification or a demonstration or just fucking breathed.

“I practice Sambo and Muay Thai. Captain Franz practices Krav Maga and Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. We will also familiarize you with several different xeno arts, but some are impossible for a human to master. Several, like Vulcan Suus Mahna, require superior strength coupled with a knowledge of neuropressure that is only known to touch telepaths.” Pike moved as he spoke, familiarizing himself with the other students while trying to ignore the smirking one at the end.

“We will concentrate on Klingon Mok’bara. There are several variations of the style, but the basic moves are consistent. It is an effective art, but it can be countered by a variety of styles used in combination.” Pike looked over to Captain Franz, who had been leaning against the wall with his arms crossed. Franz walked over to take over the next part of the lecture, detailing the class structure and schedule.

Pike dutifully kept his eyes on Franz as he spoke, even though they were both familiar with the lecture. Teaching wasn’t horrible, but he couldn’t wait for his ship to be ready. Earth was good, but space was dynamic, exciting- home.

And probably far away from James fucking Kirk. He’d put that boy on the Farragut. Cleaning the head if he kept this up. If he made the Enterprise it was over Pike’s mangled body.

“Now we’re going to have to measure your abilities. I’m going to pair you off so we can ascertain your skill levels.” Franz walked over to him as he spoke. If Pike had been paying attention, he might have been able to stop it, but as it was, he couldn’t halt the bottom from falling out of his stomach as Franz dug him a shallow grave.

“Eleven Cadets, so we need the odd man out to spar with Captain Pike. Kirk. You tested highest. You get the honor.”

Shit.

And he had been speaking about taking the fight to the ground?

Kirk didn’t speak, but Pike could see the yes, you did, old man look in his laughing eyes.

He fucking hated the color blue.

“I’m going to be walking around, taking notes. I need to know what your strengths and weaknesses are. You’ll be suited for some technique better than others.” As Franz walked around he pointed from one student to another to pair them off, then directed them to an area of the gym where they wouldn’t interfere with other teams. Pike found himself and Kirk in a far corner.

“You little shit,” Pike hissed out of the corner of his mouth.

“What?”

“Nothing.” He rolled his head and loosened his shoulders, moving several feet from Kirk. “Lets get this over with.” When he turned back towards Kirk he was unsurprised to find him falling into a defensive position, knees loose and bent, hands up, guarding the neck and the face, chin down.

“C’mon old man.” Kirk said it quietly.

“I’ll show you old. Shut up and fight.” Pike threw a right, starting close to his chest and twisting into the throw. Kirk defended, but it was quickly followed by a left, which glanced, then another right.

He couldn’t help but laugh as Kirk threw his own punch. It connected, and hurt, but there was no follow-through. Kirk was pretty damn good, but rhythm was not something learned in a bar fight.

Kirk must have realize it too, and backed off a bit before lashing out with a leg to get Pike in the shin. Smart move, trying to take the leg out, but he had telegraphed his intention too much. He did it again, and Pike dodged. And then again, except that this time Pike realized it had been a feint and instead Kirk dived into him.

There wasn’t a takedown, but it had been a near thing. Kirk now had him in a clinch, pressed chest to chest. Neither could punch anything but the back of a head, but Kirk had the advantage because he could work his knee up into Pike’s abdomen.

“Oof.”

Kirk paused in his assault, and shifted them a bit so that he had his back to the rest of the room. To anyone else it would look like they were at an impasse, or catching their breath. Pike could feel Kirk’s breath, hot and heavy, fast. It was- distracting.

“Should I go easy on you, Old Man?” Kirk whispered, then shifted against him, and fuck if he couldn’t feel Kirk half-hard against him. Pike grit his teeth against the way his own cock responded. Pike punched Kirk in the skull, but it was half-hearted. Kirk merely groaned and ground his erection into Pike’s thigh a little harder.

“Goddamn it, Cadet. We had an agreement. Quit humping me like a dog. That’s an order.”

The answering chuckle was so quiet, Pike felt it more than heard it. “I agreed not to harass you where others could see.” Then some mischief possessed him and lit his eyes for a split second before Pike felt his legs being swept and Kirk’s weight brought him down heavy.

Kirk was good, but Pike had more experience. He twisted as they fell and they ended up on their sides, facing. Pike recovered from his surprise quicker and had Kirk on his back in a half-mount in seconds, as Kirk struggled and bucked. Pike applied more pressure and shifted, trying to get a full mount so he could bash the kid’s pretty face in, but the kid bucked up again, and Pike froze as their hard lengths met and brushed and, oh god, he still wanted to bash in that smiling face but now he wanted to add fucking into the mix and that just was not going to happen. Instead, he froze, pinning Kirk with a look more than anything else.

He removed one hand from the kid’s chest, and Kirk let him as he saw it snake down. He wasn’t prepared for when Pike grabbed him and squeezed hard, wrenching a pained cry from him. Pike leaned in so he could speak into Kirk’s ear. It was just a bonus that it also put more pressure on the painful grip Pike maintained.

“Do not do this. I will kick you out of this class so fast you’ll mistake it for a temporal anomaly.”

Kirk nodded, and refused to meet his eyes.

“This is for your own good kid, “ Pike was trying to be kind, but Kirk just continued to glare over his shoulder. “Trust me.” Pike thrust down a little, and the noise Kirk made in the back of his throat was intense. “You think you want this, but you don’t. You couldn’t handle this.”

And they both knew they weren’t just talking about fucking.

Pike pushed himself up and stood, brushing himself off and adjusting things down south before offering a hand to Kirk.

“I went easy on him, “ Pike called over his shoulder. “He’s still a little slow from that injury.”

“I can take it!”

They both knew Kirk wasn’t talking about fucking either.

“Right.” Pike turned away from Kirk and spoke to Franz as he approached. “I’ve seen him fight though. It’s street fighting, but talented and creative. I’d recommend Krav Maga to build on what he already has, and some grappling to round it out. He has good cardio and fair standup, but we need to work on ground skills. I think you should direct most of his training.”

Kirk’s face was blank, but he could feel the way the kid was fuming at being pawned off. Pike turned to go survey the other students, figuring that he should get away before something stupid and incriminating and just plain wrong left the kid’s mouth.

But a devil had crawled inside him, and he couldn’t resist a parting shot even though he knew it would be like lighting a fuse.

“And son? Learn not to block a strike with your face.”

It was nice getting in the last line. It felt like he hadn’t had the upper hand in a while. The almost happy feeling it engendered lasted till the end of class, when doctor McCoy showed up and slung an arm around Kirk, ruffling his hair and jerking him out of his bitter mood.

Suddenly, it felt like he hadn’t had the last word after all.

***

Kirk shifted, uncomfortable with the silence and the piercing way Pike was looking at him. He’d been sitting there for at least five minutes, and in that time Pike had finished up a piece of paperwork, then fiddled with a pencil while just looking at him.

It was almost a relief when Pike spoke.

“You’ve put in a request to take the Kobayashi Maru early.”

Ok. Not what he was expecting.

“Yes.”

“You think you can handle it? It’s a no-win scenario.”

“You make a terrible shrink. I’ll do fine.”

Pike was still playing with that stupid pencil. “I’m not going to approve it.”

“What?”

“You aren’t going to be able to graduate a year early, son.” Pike shook his head. He didn’t seem pleased, or angry, or anything, really. Just resigned. “It’s not possible.”

Panic. Jim shot to the edge of his seat and gripped the arm rests to keep himself from jumping up and doing something- anything. “Why not? I can do this! Just look at my grades. All of my professors have said-“

“I’m your Professor too.”

That shut him up.

“You said you would behave in my course and then you pull this kind of stunt. What am I supposed to think?”

“You’re punishing me? For one little thing that didn’t do any harm?”

“Didn’t. Not couldn’t. This is my career.” Pike shook his head. “No. More than that. This is who I am. You can’t separate the Captain from the man. You’ll make a fine officer someday, as long as you keep your personal business out of command, but you’re still just a cadet.”

“What does this have to do with graduating early?”

“You’ve signed up for several of my advanced courses, but I can’t teach you if you are trying to distract me. It’s not fair to you or the other cadets.”

Jim leaned back in his chair, resting his head against the back as ran a hand through his hair. “Look. I know I messed up. I knew it was stupid when I did it. It won’t happen again.” He looked up again, and let out a shaky breath. “Please. I’ll be a model student. “

“Just how many chances am I supposed to give you? Anyone else would have been out on their ass after the first month. We’ve already had this conversation.”

Kirk suddenly looked weary. “I need this. Hell, I’d swear to you on my father’s grave except he doesn’t have one.”

That made Pike pause. Kirk never mentions his father except in the most abstract of ways. His eyes narrowed. “What is it? Really? Why so desperate?”

The sudden shift in tension was obvious to Kirk, and he tightened a little around the edges, wary. “What do you mean?”

“Is this about McCoy?”

Kirk gave a bark of laughter. “Huh?”

“He’s medical with a previous med career. His track is only three years. Are you trying to stay with him?”

“I don’t understand.”

“For posting after graduation. Are you trying to stay together?”

Kirk’s eyes widened in surprise. “What? Are you seriously-“

“I’m just asking about the nature of your relationship.”

“Oh, my fucking god. You are.” Kirk laughed again, but his eyes creased in anger. “I can’t believe this shit.”

“That’s enough Cadet.”

“Oh, rich.” Kirk said, acidic. “My relationship with Bones isn’t any of your fucking business. But I think it’s rather shitty for you to hold graduation over my head like this. I made a mistake and I’m fucking sorry. I will never hit on you again; is that what you want to hear?”

Pike couldn’t reply.

“I’ll be a perfect prince in your classes. I will even pass the goddamn Kobayashi Maru. The sun will shine out of my ass and I will join the priesthood. Just. Let. Me. Stay. On. Track.”

They faced one another, one pensive, the other a curious combination of defiant and pleading. They felt balanced on a knife’s point, both leery of making a move.

Pike spoke first.

“I don’t think I can do that.”

Kirk shot up in his seat, volatile and angry. “So that’s it? You get a little nervous and a little jealous and take it out on me? Because I’m fucking Bones? Or because I’m not fucking you?”

“That’s not it.”

But Kirk wasn’t listening. “Because I’ve got to tell you. There isn’t one person in this place that doesn’t already think we’re fucking.”

Pike paled slightly.

“You hadn’t heard?” The accompanying smile was brittle.

“Pike’s boy on the side. Your fixer upper. Your new pet project.” Kirk was on a role, gesticulating with jerky hands, pacing a bit. “I get it on with anyone I’m alone in a room with, and we’re together once a week, all cozy and shit. Kept on a long leash so I can bang everybody else, just as long as I come back to daddy dearest. I’m bent over a table and horny for you.”

“You’re full of it.”

“Really.” Kirk came to a halt and just glared. “All of that shit, all of the rumors, but you don’t do a damn thing until you start imagining me fucking Bones? And you think I have issues?”

“You seem the model of mental health at the moment.”

“Don’t turn this back on me. Don’t punish me for one thing, when you’re really punishing me for something else.”

“It’s not punishment.”

“Isn’t it? This is about you, being a dick. Yeah, I get that I was an ass. But don’t treat me like a two year old and tell me it’s for my own good.”

Kirk paused to think, then braced himself as if resolved.

“Well, fuck you, Captain.”

Then he stalked out.

Pike sat there for a long moment, looking at a PADD. He shifted it to the side and went back to working on other paperwork. He kept a steady pace, wading through protocol and jargon and a killer headache, but the PADD in his peripheral vision kept taunting him with its presence.

He thought about moving it, but couldn’t bring himself to do it.

Fuck.

He hated introspection. It was a part of command that irritated him like a sore tooth.

He hated it almost as much as he hated being a jackass.

He signed off on the PADD and submitted the information before he could talk himself out of it.

Kirk took his first Kobayashi Maru two days later. He may have failed it, but it was spectacular.

***

“Fuck!”

Leonard barely looked up from his notes as Jim let himself into his room and started to throw himself around the small space.

“Fuck fuck fuckity fuck fuck.”

Len continued his studies.

“I said - fuck, never mind.” Jim threw himself onto Leonard’s bed and covered his face with a pillow.

The thing about Jim is never giving him the upper hand. It took a week for Leonard to learn but after his epiphany, Kirk management became, if not easy, then doable. “Excuse me. Did you say something?”

Jim removed the pillow and glared. “Fuck.”

“I gathered that.” He paused. ”It don’t tell me squat. The sex variety, the fight variety or the cluster variety?”

“All of the above?”

Wait a minute. “Hey. Weren’t you just with Captain Pike?”

The pillow was back on the face but Leonard could see it move as if Jim was nodding.

“Because if this is just you being a dumbass, I have to study.” He gave his xenovirology notes a filthy look.

“Pike! He won’t approve the Kobayashi Maru. He’s going to juggle me around so I’m not in any of his classes. I’ll have to be here an extra year!”

“Well, there ya go. I don’t like to say I told you so, but, there you are.”

“Shut up. It’s totally not like that. He didn’t do it because I fucked up. He’s jealous.”

Leonard snorted. “Kid. The ego- it’s horrendous. Why the fuck would he be jealous? Your great wealth? That charm I’ve heard about but never seen hide nor hair of?”

“Jealous of you, you ass.”

Leonard actually looked up at that. “Huh?”

“He thinks we’re fucking. He thinks that I want to fuck you.”

Bones sighed. He seemed to do that a lot lately. “Jim. Get out.”

“What?”

“I’m busy, dammit.”

“That’s more important than Pike thinking I want to fuck you?”

“Yes. Because you do want to fuck me. I’m alive and at least vaguely humanoid. Just tell the nosy parker that I don’t want to fuck you and everything’s peachy. Now go away.”

Jim looked a bit offended. Well tough.

“What’s wrong with me?”

“Nothing a gag couldn’t fix. Now you have ten seconds to get your ass out of here before I test that theory with a dirty sock.”

Jim threw the pillow at him. “Fine. Fuck. Last time I come to you for sympathy.”

“Christ. I hope so.”

You couldn’t slam automatic doors, but damn if Jimmy didn’t give it his best try.

A minute later the door slid open once more, and Leonard let his face fall into his palm.

"Um. Bones? We still on for tomorrow night?"

"Yes. Leave."

When the door shut for the last time, Len vaguely wondered if he had been wrong about space travel. Sometimes putting a few light years between him and Jimmy sounded like a cold beer on a hot day.

 **  
**

**Chapter 4**

 ****

 **  
_I assess the power of a will by how much resistance, pain, torture it endures and knows how to turn to its advantage. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche_   
**

 

 

Jim didn’t show up for his next meeting with Pike, or the one after that. He had been able to take the Kobayashi Maru (which sucked), and every time he checked his graduation plan it had not yet been changed.

He wasn’t going to fuck with what worked. If Pike had forgotten he wasn’t going to remind him that Cadet Kirk existed outside of class. And if Pike was being generous (less of an ass) then Jim wasn’t going to ruin it by opening his mouth and saying something dumb.

Standing the Captain up wasn’t a great idea either, but you couldn’t be brave all the damn time.

Sometimes he caught Pike just looking at him from across the gym. He erred on the side of caution and wore sweat pants and a baggier shirt, but could still feel eyes following him when they shouldn’t be.  He tried to tell himself that he didn’t find that extremely gratifying. He also tried telling himself that he wasn’t looking back just as hard.

He tried telling himself a lot of things.

After a month of this uncomfortable dance, Pike sent him a short message to tell him they would resume their meetings.

And they did, but they weren’t the same. Pike kept the door open half the time, for one. The easy camaraderie they had developed had also gone. In its place was stilted conversation about assignments and classes, rehashing test questions. No more conversations on command theory or tactics. No occasional glasses of real liquor. They didn’t laugh or play chess or anything that wasn’t 100% Starfleet approved wholesome shit. Stiff. Uncomfortable. Formal.

Kirk was losing him. And had no idea what to do about it. So he did what he always did when faced with emotional fallout.

He ran away.

The first time, he really had been feeling under the weather. He cancelled the appointment in the morning and stayed in bed all day, even though he could have asked Bones for a hypo of some miracle pick-me-up. It worked so nice that two weeks later he scheduled an appointment with another instructor that just happened to coincide with his Pike meeting. Oops.

But it wasn’t until after two solid months of ducking the meeting or finding excuses to cut it short that he received a terse note from Pike that told him he better make the next one or else.

Things had come to a head, and he didn’t have any control over the situation at all.  Jim knew he was a control freak, but it still bothered him more than it should have.

So it was with much trepidation that he entered Pike’s office. He was going to leave the door open, but only raised an eyebrow when Pike motioned for him to shut it. He then sank into the chair, back straight, and thought ruefully of a time when he just would have flopped into it, maybe even hooked one leg over the chair arm and smiled. Pike grimaced, and Jim wondered if Pike was thinking the same thing.

“Look.” Pike stopped for a moment as if to gather himself. “I-“

“I’m sorry!”

“That’s-“

“No. I’m sorry. I was being dumb. Again. It was unprofessional, and stupid, and-“

“Shut the hell up.”

Jim closed his mouth on the rest of the words that had wanted to come tumbling out unchecked.

Pike looked down. “Hell, kid. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have reacted the way that I did. It was,” He searched for the right word. “Thoughtless.”

Jim shifted in his seat. “Uh. Thanks.” His eyes skittered around the room, not knowing where to look, but definitely not looking at Pike. “For the Kobayashi Maru, even though I tanked it. I’ll do better! And for the, you know, not having me…” He trailed off, unsure if he should bring it up.

Pike looked steady, even though his voice really wasn’t. “Hell. Don’t fucking thank me. It’ll make me feel like an even bigger asshole. I was out of line.”

Jim gave a start of surprise, but Pike just drew up the corner of his mouth. “I shouldn’t have reacted the way that I did. It was unprofessional. And quite a bit of it was none of my business and had no place in a discussion about your career.”

Kirk’s eyes squinted a bit. “Do you really think that-“  He stopped then started again. “I know I did something stupid, and you deserve an explanation.” The PADD in his hand suddenly became fascinating. “But, I don’t really have one to give you.”

Pike scoffed.

“Really. I could give you a lot of reasons, but I don’t know which one is true.” He looked up again. “But I do need to graduate in three. Need it.” He continued despite Pike’s dubious look. “And it has nothing to do with Bones, I swear-“

“Kid, I already told you, it’s none of my business.”

“But it is!” Now the kid looked annoyed. “I mean, you need to know why. Well, I don’t know why, but I know why not. And it isn’t Bones. We’re not. I mean, not fucking.”

Pike leaned back and looked at the ceiling.

“Look, you don’t understand. Bones is smoking hot, right? I know it, but he’s my friend. Maybe my only real one, and I don’t want to fuck that up, because I would fuck it up. Badly.  And because Bones is going to find some hot nurse and have hot sex and make babies and settle down with a white picket fence and a dog. Because that’s what Bones needs.” He became fidgety again. Restless.

 “Soul deep he needs it. I could probably get him to fuck me, but it wouldn’t be real. I’d be like a weigh station on the trip towards his real life. Sure he needs me, but only for now, only until he’s not afraid of life anymore.”

Kirk looked up, and once again he seemed naked. “He has to find the person he needs forever, and he can’t do that if he’s busy fucking me.”

Embarrassment suddenly flooded his face. “And fuck you for making me poetic and shit. This conversation never happened.”

Pike laughed because that was so much more like the old Kirk. And if a weight somehow felt lifted off his chest,  that was just a bonus that he would not examine too closely.

 “Also? Nice shoes. We should totally fuck.”

Yeah. It was good to have the kid back.

***

Pike was running a little late the next Friday, and rushed into the office before Steve could stop him about something.

“I’m sorry I’m late, Cadet, I just-“

He stopped short.

Kirk wasn’t sitting there, but Dr. McCoy was, very comfortably. Blue-jeaned and cowboy booted, legs splayed with one ankle over a knee and slouched back with his elbows canted out on the armrests.

“Sir.” He nodded in acknowledgement.

“Where is cadet Kirk?”

“Sick. For real this time. He was gonna come but I gave him a shot to sleep off. I figured you and me needed to talk.”

Pike looked him up and down.

“This isn’t about anything official so I didn’t dress official.”

“Why are you here?”

“Don’t play dumb.”

Pike bristled, but McCoy just waved him off. “The kid needs someone to look after him, so it’s got to be me. His family sure isn’t doing it, and I always thought that the family you choose is more important than the family you get stuck with.”

Pike sat down, but his back was ramrod straight, and mouth a line of disapproval.

“Just pretend I’m not a cadet and this’ll go fine.”

“I don’t know if that would be wise, Doctor.”

“I was never good at wise. But neither is Jim, so that’s why I’m here.” McCoy rolled his eyes. “Cut the horseshit. I know that you and Jim have this thing.”

He cut through Pike’s protests. “I know you aren’t having sex, but you’re a damn sight more than Captain and Cadet.” The Doctor snorted in amusement. “Huh. Sounds like bad porn.”

“I still fail to see what-“

“Sure you do. “  McCoy steepled his fingers together and scowled. “Why don’t you just pretend that I’m his daddy and that I’m asking intentions.”

Now it was Pike’s turn to laugh.  “Intentions? Is he a virgin now?”

“I’m not worried about his dick. Kid’s got a soft underbelly. That’s what I’m worried about. I don’t need you assisting him towards a fall.”

“I don’t plan on it.” Pike was getting angry, and his curt delivery underlined it. “And as for you being his father?  Cadet Kirk had some interesting things to say about that.”

Pike stopped, cursing his reckless mouth, but McCoy just rolled his eyes again.

“You think I don’t know Jim’s insane romantic theory ‘bout me and the nurse and a stupid fence? I love the boy like crazy, but he can be thicker n’ shit. I’m a practical man and I don’t give a damn about fences, I already have a kid and I’m allergic to dogs. Still wouldn’t fuck Jimmy. That poor bastard wants the fence and the trimmings and he doesn’t even know it, the romantic twat- won’t admit it to himself. “

Pike returned McCoy’s scowl in reply.

“Raised on stories of his parents ‘great love’ even though they statistically woulda been bitterly divorced if George had lived. Like If Jocelyn had kicked it during the wedding she would have been the love of my life forever instead of the soul-sucking harpy she is today. What-if versus hindsight- and some people live on the what-if like a banquet of sawdust.” Doctor McCoy turned his gaze inward and shook his head.

“I can’t give the boy that. It’s not like he wants flowers, but I don’t fucking cuddle, and the most I’m good for is beer and sex and telling him to shut the fuck up.” He seemed to come to himself, and smiled ruefully. “Probably just what he needs, really- but, Christ forgive me, I just don’t like ‘em blond.” He pondered this for a moment. “Or whiny.”

Pike could have laughed, but it strangled in his throat.

“And he don’t really want me, anyways. What the boy needs is a friend who isn’t gonna fuck him. I think it would disappoint him if I actually did take him up on his offer one day. Like it would invalidate everything else.”

The room was quiet for a moment as they both pondered the enigma presented by James Kirk.

“So where does that leave me?”

“I don’t know. Where does that leave you?”

Good question. Pike had no idea.

“Why did you volunteer all of this? He wouldn’t thank you.”

“I don’t like this one damn bit, but Jim wants what Jim wants and he’s old enough to git it, even if it is poison. I’m just making sure we’re on the same page. You don’t fuck the kid over, I don’t forget the Hippocratic oath.”

“You are assuming too much. And I don’t care for threats.”

McCoy stood up and tipped his head in recognition. “I lead a life of service. I give people what they ask for, even if they go about it in a damn stupid way. If you don’t go askin’ for it, you won’t be gettin’ it.”

Pike looked a bit grim as he looked through the top of his desk, staring but not seeing.

“I’m not trying to be a dick. Just comes naturally. But I wanted to let you know that you aren’t only accountable to the Admiralty. Not anymore.”

“I don’t have to explain myself to you.”

“Tch.” McCoy paused before the door. “Don’t have to. Jim ain’t the only transparent ass I know.”

For the life of him, Pike didn’t know what to say to that.

***

And life went on as usual for the next four months. The same classes. The same meetings. Enjoyable, with that little zing of tension that was so exquisitely alive. It was easy. Fun. Even Kirk’s little passes had become funny instead of annoying.

And if Pike sometimes daydreamed about a little bit more, it didn’t harm anyone.

Kirk would flirt a bit.

He would graduate.

Serve aboard the Nelson or maybe the Farragut.

And maybe after he was promoted and came into his own. If he was still interested…

Just maybe. It was a good daydream for a man who didn’t have time to daydream.

Pike never finished those thoughts. But then again, after six months of quiet, there suddenly wasn’t any point in finishing them.

Kirk’s second Kobayashi Maru destroyed everything.

***

Pike knew something wasn’t right as soon as Kirk entered the room.

Pike was in the overhead observatory, looking down at the bridge simulator when the kid entered. He was strung tight, face pulled into a hollow mask, jaw so hardened that it must hurt.

Pike knew that he was probably presenting a façade of determination to almost everyone else, but Pike was becoming more fluent in what made Cadet Kirk tick. A few others, like the xenolinguistics major, looked concerned. So did Doctor McCoy, but he just shook his head in reply when Kirk gave him a look.

Kirk took his seat in the captain’s chair and was quiet for a moment while everyone looked to him.  He looked fierce. Contained.

Like an explosive.

Then Kirk looked up at the overhead, straight at Pike, almost like he could see him through the impenetrable one-way glass. He raised his hand. “Commence simulation. Cadet Kirk. One-One-One-Alpha-Mark-Two.”

And it happened like it had happened hundreds of times before. The ship hailed. The Klingon vessels.  The unwinnable scenario.

The last time Kirk had tried diplomacy, which had rather surprised Pike but had pleased most of his instructors. He was growing up, they said.

This time, he threw everything he had into brutalizing the Klingon battle-cruisers in what amounted to a suicide strike.

“Jim, are you sure?”

“Do it!”

“All hands, abandon ship.”

“The escape pods won’t clear in time. There is a good chance that over half of them will get hit by the blast.”

“We’ll take it.”

Another hit.

"Decompression, decks seven and eight.”

“Fire again.”

It was…desperate. Wild. Intense.

When the lights suddenly went up and the disembodied voice said “Kobayashi Maru- destroyed,” Kirk sank back in the chair, grip tight, eyes still banked fires.

Someone said something to him, a commiseration, but most of the other cadets that formed the doomed bridge crew seemed wary of making any sudden moves around him.

He clenched his fist. Once, Twice. He stood so suddenly everyone else jumped, still wired from the simulation.

Kirk left without speaking to anyone, blowing right past the instructor who entered to give him a performance evaluation.

Pike also left.

***

He went back to his office, cursing Kirk and his impulsive behavior. He would nail his ass to a wall on Friday, the little bastard.  He knew better than to-

The door opened.

“You can’t-“

 Kirk stood in the doorway, still angry and humming with energy. His secretary was fluttering behind him, looking distressed.

“It’s fine, Stephen. Leave it. Come in, Cadet Kirk.”

He entered the room, shutting the door behind him as Pike walked towards his desk.

“Just what did you think you were doing?” He turned to glare at Kirk, but Kirk had followed him, was right on top of him. “You didn’t-“

And then Kirk was pressed against him from chest to hip, and his tongue was invading his mouth, stabbing at it, rubbing against his teeth and gums, and insinuating itself into a steady rhythm of thrust and dominance that Pike had to return in kind.

A hand found its way under his uniform top and his undershirt, strong fingers playing across his abdomen and the trail of hair that decorated it just below his belly. They were everywhere. Stomach, hips. He lost his jacket, thin knit shirt ruched up under his armpits as Kirk plucked at hardened nipples, too hard, but so good. So fine.

And still that mouth ate as his, no teasing, no tentativeness, just want and heat.

Wet flesh sliding down his neck, sucking hot trails and leaving bruised skin in its wake. A mouth on nipple, pulling and scraping. And Chris had never though he was much for teeth, but Oh, god, those teeth, and those lips.

“Fuck.”

They clawed at Kirk’s clothing till he was bare to the waist, as best they could without completely separating. Pike scratched lines of pink down Jim’s chest, then bent to lick those same marks.

Flies became undone, plackets splayed open. Pike inserted his hands to grab at Kirk’s ass, pulling them together as he bore them back into the desk. Trousers worked down until they met, cock to naked cock for the first time as Chris hitched them up a bit, sliding Jim against him until they practically howled at the sensation.

“Fuck.” It was Kirk this time, eyes closed, head thrown back displaying that long throat. “Fuck. So good. Wanted this. God.”

And yes, Pike was angry. So fucking angry, but that just made it even better, these feelings, so much that it fucking hurt. When he grabbed their dicks together to pull, it was harder than it should have been, and rougher, making Kirk keen deep in the back of his throat, but that was right too. Perfect.

Kirk licked at his neck, bit at his shoulder as he lay his head there, and hands touched everywhere, grabbing his ass and kneading, pulling Pike against him even harder.

“I want you to fuck me.” Kirk pulled back enough to lick at his ear, then looked at him as he placed his palm over Pike’s as he masturbated them both. “I want to come on your cock as you fuck me over your desk.”

He lowered his voice. “I want you to make me scream with your cock.”

His eyes were bird-bright and feverish and fuck, Chris hated him, and wanted him and couldn’t say no to that because it was all that he could think about too. So he kissed Jim again and again before letting go of their erections, already slick and wanting. He grabbed Kirk roughly by the shoulder and spun him, pushing him down into the desk and kicking his legs to splay them.

Jim groaned and the feeling went straight to his dick. Chris grabbed it with one hand, directing it to rub at the crease of Jim’s ass. Jim lifted it in invitation, lunging it, but Pike slapped him and grabbed the side of his head with one hand, pushing his face to the table, pressing his cheek to the cool wood surface.

He wasn’t particularly gentle, but Kirk just bucked back harder, trying to get Pike exactly where he needed him. Pike slapped him once more and pressed his face harder. His cock rubbed again and again, teasing Jim’s hole, but never penetrating.

“Please! Stop teasing.”

Pike grabbed his cock with his free hand and slapped it against him. “Is this what you want?”

“God, yes! Please.”

“Such a fucking slut.”

“Do it!”

Pike dipped two fingers into the glass of water on his desk then placed them against Kirk’s ass, pushing in with no preliminaries. So pretty. It was surprisingly tight, and so hot, and could imagine how it would feel as he sheathed his cock.

  
“Fuuuuuckkk…” Kirks vice was guttural as he bucked up into the invading digits. “C’mon, c’mon, c’mon. Please. Fuck me.”

But Pike just kept playing with his hole. Pissed off, probably rougher than he should be as he scissored, then yanked a bit till the rim was a glistening, swollen pink. Pinned as he was at head and hip, Kirk could only writhe his shoulders in want, sinuous as a snake.

“I need you to fuck me. Please. I need it.”

And for a moment, Pike could only feel contempt as he looked down as his back, shiny with perspiration. He could feel it as he wet his hand and grasped his own arousal. He felt it as he pressed the flared head to Kirk’s ass and pressed- oh fuck, so goddamn good, so amazingly good it fucking hurt so good- as he breached the sphincter and slid in balls deep, as he thrust without giving Kirk time to acclimate to his invasion.

When he plowed on, finding Jim’s prostate, hammering into it as he mewled underneath his violent thrusts, he felt it then too.

He knew he was hurting him, just like he knew that Kirk was beyond caring, because it was still so right and good and fucking perfect like a diamond. He still felt it.

He felt it and he started speaking, at first low in Kirk’s ear as he pressed painfully into the desk, then louder and more assured.

“Do you like it?”

“Is this what you fucking wanted?”

“Do you think that you are in control here?”

Each punctuating the thrusts that were becoming quicker and more erratic.

“N-nnn” Kirk was beyond answering. Good. Because he didn’t want to hear his excuses anyway.

“Did you really think this would work? That you could shake your ass for me and I would come running to save your shit?”

“That you could put out and I’d be grateful enough to pull favors?”

“That I’d be dumb enough to fall for your line of shit? Risk my career by giving you special treatment because you can’t keep these pretty legs shut? To help you with the Kobayashi Maru when you fuck up?”

He was going to come soon, his pattern was starting to stutter, his balls drawn up and tight and everything was throbbing in preparation for release and it was going to be amazing.

He reached underneath to palm at Jim’s cock, hard and leaking straight up against his abdomen. It only took one hard tug, two, before Kirk was almost squealing his release against the desk, tightening like a constrictor along Chris’ length, making his breath hitch.

He sped up, fucking into the slackening ass even harder, and leaned over to lick a stripe up Kirk’s neck, ending up by his ear, panting hot breath.

“You’re a fool.”

And then he was coming, whiting out his vision, buckling his legs as sweet agony poured from his cock. The warmth of his own come bathed his dick in Kirk’s tight heat as he lay there, spent, catching his breath for a few moments before he had to pull away, softening and overly sensitive.

Kirk lay there for another moment as well, face turned away, his hole puffy and raw from the abuse, slightly leaking a bit of semen. Pike had to stop himself from reaching out with a finger to swipe some up and see it glistening on his own skin.

So fucking good.

He moved away, giving Kirk room to sit up. He did so, but refused to look up.

After a minute he just got up and began searching for his clothes, turning them right side out before putting them on, one by one, starting with his socks.

Pike snorted. “What? Wasn’t what you expected?”

Kirk gave him an angry look, but didn’t say anything; just continued dressing.

Pike huffed then found his own clothes, dressing quicker than Kirk, but then again, Pike wasn’t the one hurting.

When Kirk finished putting on his shoes, he just stood there, staring at the floor.

“I want to transfer advisors.”

That brought Pike up short. “What.”

Kirk still refused to meet his eyes. “I want to transfer advisors.”

“What the hell. You get what you want now you need to move on to the next big game? Screw you Kirk.”

“That’s not it.” He tensed all over. “I just need a transfer. This,” he gestured, “won’t work.”

“No.”

Kirk finally looked at him, startling him with the rage he could see beneath the surface, barely banked. “I’ve put up with a lot of shit in my life. Too much. But I’m not going to take it from you.” He looked down again. “I don’t fucking deserve it.”

“Please, do you think you’re the only cadet that’s had it rough?”

The bitter laugh in reply surprised Pike. He had never heard it from anyone who hadn’t lived through a war. Kirk shook his head.

“Do you want to know why I joined Starfleet? You asked me before, but I didn’t feel like telling you then.” Another one of those bitter chuckles.  
“ I fucking hate Starfleet. They put my father out there in the middle of the black with a wife and a kid on the way just to study some sort of alien fungus, and didn’t do shit when it all went to hell. It’s like the admiralty has darts named after starships that they fling at a map. Starfleet enabled my fucked-in-the-head mom by getting her off planet and away from her own kids. Who were left with a Starfleet flunkie stepfather that beat them like he was keeping time by it.”

Kirk was walking closer with every sentence, until they were almost chest to chest.

“For someone who’s seen so much of the galaxy, you are remarkably naïve. You think I got like I am because daddy died and Frank knocked me around a little? Because my mom didn’t breastfeed me enough or some shit? Sounds like a rural utopia to me.”

Jim leaned in so close that Pike could feel his breath, smell him, even smell himself on him, dammit, and damn if he didn’t give a little twitch, despite having just spent himself. “But then again, that’s what it was supposed to be, right? Utopia. My aunt and uncle’s farmstead, a buffer between me and Frank. Good living, no real way to get in trouble. I was just 13. ”

Kirk quirked an eyebrow at Pike’s questioning look, and this time his lips really did touch the tender curve of Pike’s ear. And he whispered – so soft.

“Tarsus IV.”

Air rushed through Pike’s clenched teeth as the blood drained from his face.

Oh no.

No. Not Jim.

“I’m sure you’ve seen the photos. Required reading, isn’t it. An object lesson, probably completely abstract for you. A cool puzzle, even. I hear it’s a popular assignment, essays on what you would have done differently.” Kirk- Jim, just put his hands against Pike’s chest and shoved, stepping away to put some distance between them.

“So fuck Starfleet. Kodos wasn’t elected. He was appointed because he kissed the right Federation ass. The lack of communication that led to fucking genocide? Starfleet had ways, but they were a pain in the ass, sucked so much energy, might have interfered with a starship’s ability to examine fungus. So why the fuck bother, the ship would be there soon, anyways, right? So many ways Starfleet could have helped, so many ways they dropped the fucking ball. Fucking Federation lapdogs.”

The laughter was loud, and surprising, becoming hysterical until it abruptly cut off. Pike’s hand twitched, wanting to reach out, but Jim looked so fragile in that moment, like spider cracks spreading over glass, that Pike didn’t want to take the chance of breaking him.

“I joined Starfleet. I JOINED FUCKING STARFLEET. I don’t even have my father’s eyes anymore, because of Starfleet. Kodos preferred us blond and blue-eyed; mine were brown, you know? But I was able to get an injection into my pupils to change the pigment.”

“Jim.”

Jim backed into the chair and sat heavily, elbows on knees and face in his hands. “Every single friend- dead. But I joined Starfleet,” he choked.

“Jimmy.”

When he looked up, his eyes were red-rimmed but there weren’t any tears. Probably hadn’t been for a long time. “I joined Starfleet- because you asked me to. You wanted me to join because you thought I could join. Like I wasn’t some hick fuck-up that couldn’t live up to his dad’s rep. No prospects but jail. You flat out told me you thought I could do better, and there sure as fuck wasn’t anyone else that would do that.” He coughed at that. “And I was a sucker, because I joined fucking Starfleet. Because I thought maybe you were better than the rest of those cunts that think they rule the universe.”

“Dammit, son. Just let me-“

“I’m not letting you do shit anymore. And I’m not your son. Even I’m not fucked up enough to put up with that kind of treatment. Find Admiral Archer and grab your ankles. Or a nice, fresh cadet to mindfuck and ride like a bitch. I’ll even give you a written recommendation. But my mind is all fucked out.” He stood up abruptly and rubbed his sweaty palms on his pants. And from one moment to the next, he changed. Composed himself, shut down the majority of what made him Jim Kirk. It was…frightening.

“ So. Congratulations on boldly going and so on and so forth, or whatever it is you guys talk about to stimulate yourselves. I’m done here.”

And he got up and left. Just like that.

 Like they had just had a tea party and discussed the weather.

As if he hadn’t just gutted Pike where he stood.

***

It was only an hour later that he glanced through his news packet, trying to fight his way through the curious numbness that gripped him, finding some cold comfort in routine. Ordinary. Structured.

He had thought that it couldn’t get any worse. Ha!

He had been so goddamn wrong.

He reached into a cabinet and pulled out a bottle of scotch. Didn’t even bother with a glass as he  tipped it straight down. Dead was looking better than drunk.

Recent news reported Winona Kirk dead as of yesterday.

 ****

 **Chapter 5**

 ****

 **  
_Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfils the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things. ~ Winston Churchill_   
**

 

 

It had been a long goddamn day. Of all the days to have to pull a double shift. All Leonard wanted was to crawl into bed, but he had to shower then track down the kid. Keep him from doing something stupid.

His door slid open, sounding like paper sliding against paper, which was not reassuring in the least. His room was dark and cool, and he was so tempted to just pass out under crisp sheets. But the Kid; the news was all over Starfleet.

Damn Winona Kirk.

“Lights. Thirty percent.” He dropped his messenger bag next to the door and toed off his shoes. Didn’t matter how comfy the shoes, after that many hours on his feet, they became a little purgatory. He wiggled his feet a bit then stripped off his socks, sighing in relief before walking further into the room.

He was shelling his jacket when he saw Jim. The kid was curled up on Leonard’s crappy sofa, knees to chest, still in this morning’s uniform. Len had wondered if he was asleep at first, but no, he was just staring at the wall opposite him.

“Hey.”

Jim looked up, and for once he couldn’t figure out what the kid was thinking. His face was like a doll. A tabula rasa.

“Hey.”

Leonard had been prepared for a lot of shit. Shit he knew how to deal with. Swearing, fighting, drinking, whoring- those were tangible things that he could easily wrap his brain around, he could pin em down like a bug under glass and study them until he just knew. But this.

He’d never seen the kid like this before. It was new territory.

“I was gonna come find you, but then there was-“

An accident, he almost said, but caught himself just in time. Kid didn’t need to hear it. “I had to work overtime. Ah hell, Jim. I heard what happened.  And I’m sorry ‘bout your momma. You could have told me. I’d have called in.”

Jim clasped his hands in front of himself and started examining his knuckles. “Yeah.”

Leonard tossed his jacket to the side and sat down on the bed, opposite Jim. “When did you find out?”

“Last night. My brother,” He exhaled a large breath, “Sam, he called me. About three.”

“I didn’t know you had a brother.”

Jim chuckled, sounding like grit on metal. “Well, most days he doesn’t claim me. I’m sure you can imagine why.” He tried to smile his regular cocksure grin, but it was a ghastly parody of itself. He must have realized it, because the smile died, and his Adam’s apple worked in his throat as he looked down again.

“Nope. Can’t imagine it. Must be a damn fool.”

 “No. Sam- he’s a good guy. Fucking brilliant. He just finished up a doctorate in biology and he’s doing some amazing research; probably going to go off world. And he’s getting married.” Jim just hugged his legs harder. “I haven’t met her. Obviously. But I looked her up and she’s just like him, crazy intelligent, and beautiful.” He paused as his teeth worried his lower lip. “He deserves that.”

“Are you going to.” Leonard gestured with his hand, not even sure himself if he was trying to indicate flying or Iowa or what.

“Um. No. No, there wasn’t really.” Jim’s face collapsed for a moment, but then he recovered. “Uh. No real body. Just a service. It wouldn’t be very comfortable for everyone else. There’s a service here too. In two days.” He knocked his head against the wall, gently. “I’ll go to that one.”

“I’ll go with you.”

“Thanks.” The word was small and tight.

“Did you make any of your other classes today? I can get you notes for one of ‘em. Got a class with N’Bocote in your logistics class.”

Jim shook his head.

“Did you eat?”

Another head shake. Leonard got up and rummaged around his desk for a minute before returning to press an energy bar into Jim’s hand.

“Eat it. It’s good, not like those ass-flavored protein nibs.”

Jim peeled the crinkly plastic away from the bar and tore off chunk after chunk to pop in his mouth. This easy obedience was completely at odds with his usual behavior, and it made Leonard want to hit something.

“I’m sure they’ll take this into account. The Kobayashi Maru, I mean. Jackasses. They should have rescheduled.”

If Leonard hadn’t been watching Jim so hard, he might have missed the way Jim flinched, but there was no way he would have missed the way his muscles suddenly coiled up.

“Jim. Did you speak to Pike about it?”

The sound the kid made was strangled. Half laugh, half something wretched and fractured.

“Oh.” God fucking damn Pike, too. “Oh hell.”

Jim just nodded quickly, curling the supplement wrapper in his fist. “I fucked up Bones. I fucking fucked up. No surprises there, really, but it was a huge fuck up. And it’s been a fuck up since before I can remember.” He closed his eyes and listed to the side, finally settling into the sofa and curling himself into the smallest ball possible. His forehead was pressed to his knees, muffling his words. “Just never fucked up this badly before.”

Bones was no good at this comforting shit. He felt out of his depth as he reached over and stroked Jim’s elbow.

“I know it looks bad now, but tomorrow might give it some perspective. Jeezus, Jim, you just lost your mom. He ain’t gonna hold it against you.”

When Jim laughed, Leonard gave a start and pulled away in surprise.

“Fucking A right he isn’t. He already held it against me.” The double entendre was inappropriate and horrible and did something to Len’s insides.

Jim laughed again and started to rock. And the rocking made Leonard a bit sick, a bit like throwing the fuck up, because he suddenly realized that this thing he thought he had a handle on; he didn’t have a handle on it at all.

“He comes near me at all I’m going to rip his fucking dick off.”  Jim was peering at him, face red at being curled up so tightly, fierce and meaning it at that moment. “My fuck up wasn’t today. It was talking to him and falling for his line of shit in the first place.” His eyes dodged Leonard’s before he added, “I shouldn’t even fucking be here. Shouldn’t have joined. Played me like a sucker, you know?” One cheek drew up in a grimace. “The hustler got himself hustled.”

Missing too much information, too little to go on, not enough to give Jim whatever Jim needed, so he took up his hand once again. No squeezing or stroking, just a human connection to help ground him. Jim took the offered hand and twisted them until his was dominant.

“It’d be stupid to regret it though. I found my only friend on that stupid shuttle.”

Getting choked up was just not something McCoy did. Not during his wedding. Maybe a little when his daughter was born, but that had been an expected, anticipated event, not this raw baring of soul from the most emotionally constipated person he had ever met.

 Jocelyn had once accused him of collecting broken things because he liked to mend, ever the doctor. Small electronics, splintered wood furniture, even a bird’s wing. He found himself hoping, praying even, that this was one broken thing that was finally purged enough, raw enough, to start healing.

He didn’t know how to put that into words that didn’t sound stupid and like a fucking girl, so he settled on, “I’m gonna kick Pike’s ass.”

Jim’s smile was in his eyes, but Len could tell when he was being humored. “Sure.”

“You want a drink?”

Kirk hesitated. “No.”

“Ok. Just lemme know.” Which encompassed a whole hell of a lot, but that’s what he meant.

They lay like that for a while until Jim’s eyes fluttered shut and his breathing evened out, body slowly uncurling. Leonard stood up and stripped the blanket from the bed, draping it over Jim then stripped down to his boxer briefs and slipped into his bed. He dimmed the lights but couldn’t sleep immediately. His mind kept getting tied up in different scenarios, different what-ifs.

Jim should be out getting hammered in some shit-hole bar in an attempt to bleed or fuck the pain away. Typical Jim SNAFU shit.  Instead, he was walking wounded, bleeding out on McCoy’s sofa even though there was no visible mark and not a damn thing Len could do to make it better.

God damn Pike. What the fuck had he done? How had he fucked him up so badly?

And better yet, could the bastard fix it?

***

Chris hadn’t had a hangover in years. When he drank, if he drank, he generally remembered to stay hydrated and didn’t over do it. But this morning. Afternoon? Was horrible, but not really unexpected. He had done his best to kill his liver, but the pounding in his head still couldn’t drown out everything else that was crowding it too.

Soft sheets were thrown to the side as he lurched onto unsteady feet and shuffled, naked and goose-fleshed into his bathroom. There was a distant pounding at the front door that matched the one behind his eyes, but he had a toilet to hug that took precedence over everything else.

After twenty minutes of vomiting up his stomach lining with the usual acidic bile, he rinsed his mouth and hit his teeth with a sonic cleanser, gripping the subway tiles of the counter with unsteady hands.  A face full of cold water helped remove the sleep from his eyes, but there was no way he could face removing stubble right now.

There was still pounding at the door, despite the fact that he had told Stephen he wouldn’t be available, so he quickly wrestled into a pair of jeans and padded down the two flights of stairs, pausing once or twice when he felt like he might overbalance. Just what he needed. Rug burn from a berber carpet and breaking his fucking neck.

Fuck.  He loved his town home, but it wasn’t very convenient, post-drinking binge.

“Shut up. I’m coming.”

The pounding ceased, but Chris could make out a figure through the smoked glass of the front door. Maybe he was too sick, or just too apathetic to care about rudimentary safety, but he threw caution to the wind and wrenched the door open, letting in eye-curdling sunlight.

He barely had time to register who it was before his head snapped back and his jaw exploded with pain.

His knees hit the tile with a crack as he went down, turning so he could dry heave. He was pushed along the floor by a boot, just enough to allow the door to close. As he coughed up a thin line of saliva the same boots made their way around him, out of the narrow foyer and into the open-plan living area partitioned off by sofas and bookshelves.

“Shit.”

McCoy stopped in front of the fire place, flanked by two Haida totems, before he turned, hands resting on his hips. “The boy’s mom just died and you couldn’t keep your pecker in yer pants for one more goddamn day? Do YOU need another psych eval? I thought Captains were supposed to be smart. Or did you get here by correspondence course and pretty eyes?”

Pike chose to stay down, mostly due to necessity. He braced his back against the doorframe and drew his knees up. His vision was still a bit fuzzy, so he rested his head against the frame as well.

“Fuck. I know. I didn’t find out until after.”

“Don’t give me that shit. I told you not to do it and you did it anyway.”

Pike grunted.

“And that boy wasn’t just running scared. That boy had some hurt put on him. What the hell did you do?”

“I didn’t know!” God, he wished he was feeling up for this conversation. He thought he’d have more time. His articulation was shot to hell along with his motor skills, and now his jaw fucking hurt. Doctor had been working out. “He’s been after me since he signed on, and I thought he was trying to get a leg up on the competition. Even though he doesn’t need it.”

“You’re a moron. Jim thinks you hung the moon and built the starship to get there.”

Pike could feel more bile coming up. “Not anymore.”

“What did you do?” McCoy had gotten quieter, and his quiet was inversely proportionate to how dangerous he sounded.

“I thought.” No, Chris, you didn’t fucking think. “I thought he was trying to get me to.” He shook his head, and that was a bad idea. “I don’t know. He had performed badly in the Kobayashi Maru. And then he showed up in my office with his tongue down my throat.  What the hell was I supposed to think!” His eyes squeezed shut on the moisture he could feel gathering in the corners. McCoy sounded like he was moving around, but Pike couldn’t be assed to care much about what he was doing.

“And your dick just accidentally slipped into him?”

“I know! Christ. I know.”

“Naw. I don’t know that you do. The kid is almost obsessed stalker over you and you think he wants an A turned into an A plus? You’re dumber than a post.”

Pike just nodded. “I- said some things.”

“Really.”

“While we were,” He coughed. “Ah. In the middle of everything.”

“So you treated him like a whore. While you fucked him. After his mom died.”

Oh god. “Yes.” He could feel McCoy’s eyes on him, angry and crazy, and suddenly he wished he had a friend like McCoy. “And then after. He asked for a transfer, and I was just so pissed. I brought up his family. Well, he brought it up. I taunted him into it.” A spring had been wound too tight in his gut, and was just waiting to unspool and take him with it, but the silence that began to stretch was unnerving, ticking into one minute, then two.

“Ya know, I used to think the boy was crazy cause of his thing for you and how fuckin’ emotionally retarded he was. But now that I know you’re an even bigger asshole than Jim, I’m pretty sure you’re soul mates.” McCoy  hunkered down next to him. “ Too bad you fucked that all to hell. I practically told you that you didn’t have the option of just fucking him. Same damn reason I haven’t taken him up on it. Now you put that in your fancy captain’s hat and smoke it.”

“You know what? To hell with you. You could have told me a lot more than you did, so I wouldn’t be flying blind.”

“Don’t blame me because you’re an ass who can’t take a hint.”

“Why didn’t you fucking tell me? That was need-to-know information.”

“Tell you what?”

“Tarsus.”

“What.” Suddenly, he pitched forward, grabbing Chris’ wrist in a big hand, squeezing so hard he could feel bone grinding against bone. “What the fuck do you mean?”

For the second day in a row, Pike felt that sinking feeling in his gut. A feeling everyone in command became acquainted with at one time or another. It was usually accompanied by bodies, and memorials. It was the same feeling they tried to achieve through the Kobayashi Maru.

And here was his.

“You didn’t know?”

“Tarsus? Did he tell you that? Or are you pulling it out of your ass?”

“He told me. It was,“ he tried to think of a descriptor, but failed. “Bad.”

“Bad? Do you know what the suicide rate for Tarsus IV survivors is? Do you know how many of them are permanently hospitalized? “ McCoy grabbed him by the shoulder and shook. “ I’ve worked with a few of them before and almost lost my lunch. They cannibalized the ones they killed.”

It was nothing Pike hadn’t told himself.

McCoy suddenly stood up. “Transfer him. Now. He wants to graduate in three. Let him do it. I don’t care what you have to do to get it done, but I don’t want him anywhere near you.”

Pike rolled his head up to look at McCoy. “It isn’t that easy.”

“It is if you want it to be.”

“The kid hates Starfleet.”

McCoy snorted. “Don’t blame him. I’m not thinking much of it right now, myself. “

Pike winced as McCoy poked him with the toe of his boot. “You’re misunderstanding me. He hates Starfleet. He’s totally compromised.” He met McCoy’s eyes with total seriousness. “Unfit for command.”

He kept his eyes on McCoy even as the doctor’s frown turned into a snarl of contempt. “Oh no. No you don’t. You are not taking that away from him. He is good at what he does. He’s driven. He might not be doing it for Starfleet, but I know Jim enough to know he will do it for himself. He’s functional.” He flexed one hand, and Pike braced himself for another hit, but it didn’t come.

“You aren’t going to say shit, because if you do I’m going to have you nailed to a fucking wall over fucking a cadet.” McCoy smirked. “And not just any cadet. His credit is pretty high right now. Son of George Kirk. Mom just died. Goddamn brilliant and sells a story like a con man. Who do you think they’ll believe? Even if you drop the Tarsus bomb, do you think he’s too broken to turn that to his advantage? I’ll have it in all the papers. The public would eat it up while they bury you.”

Pike sagged against the wall.

“You wanna keep that pretty new Starship of yours, don’t you? So give the kid his command and stay far away from him.”

“It’s unethical.”

“Pot. Kettle. You sack of shit.”

Pike stood up, slowly, leaning against the wall for leverage as he did so. “I could make life very difficult for you, too. I could have you assigned to a tin can in deep space.”

“Oh, who's a big man? Does this look like the face of someone who gives a shit? Besides. You’re dumb, but not that dumb. Now that you fucked the kid all up I don’t think you’re gonna compound the problem by taking away the only thing he wants and the only person he has left.” Bone’s appraisal was frank. “Unless, a’course, you’ve got the most pain-filled pussy in the fleet.”

 McCoy stabbed him with the toe of his boot once more, before turning to leave. “I’m late for my shift. If you’ll excuse me, I’ve got something more interesting to see to. Deltan crotch rot.”

  
 **  
Chapter 6**

 _  
****  
_

**  
_You gotta love livin', baby, 'cause dyin' is a pain in the ass. ~ Frank Sinatra_   
**

 

 

“I hate funerals. No damn use at all, except making people feel worse. I threw my best dark suit out after the last one.”

“I guess they think that misery likes to shop. Thank fuck for uniforms.”

They had asked Jim to speak at the memorial, but his throat had closed up so quickly it was almost like anaphylaxis, and he could only shake his head no. There had been rumor that they had asked Pike in his stead, but that was either unfounded, or the man had been smart enough to say no. It was a good thing, because listening to Admiral Komack talk about duty, and valor and all things heroic while discussing his mom was bad enough. He wouldn’t have been able to stomach it at all if it had been Pike wrapping his mouth around Winona’s name like he had a right.

Duty. Valor.

He hadn’t spoken because what he had to say wasn’t what anyone here wanted to know. Nursing scraped knees. Herding two hyperactive kids through a grocery store and letting him ride in the hovering basket even though he wasn’t supposed to. Teaching him to read from The Little Starship That Could  when he was two. Then later, when she wasn’t there, and he only had a shirt that smelled like her to keep him company for months at a time. The moisture on his face from smelling the honeysuckle of her when she hugged him in the aftermath of Tarsus, feeling his ribs and soaking his hair with tears. Pushing her away because he was a complete ass.

Funerals were for the living, and he was the only one there who cared about Winona Kirk, mother. Let the rest of them have Winona Kirk, hero and martyr.

He coughed to cover up a half-amused snort. Humanity supposedly wasn’t much on big religion anymore, but it seemed like they had just replaced the Virgin Mary with an updated federation-approved, nondenominational one. Typical B.S.

Kind of made him wonder what that said for his role in this mess.

Bones is at his side. Not touching, but occasionally raising a hand to his back in a supportive I’m-here-for-you-man gesture. It’s awkward, but kind of sweet. He’d tell Bones that later, and watch him go red, and probably smack Jim in the back of the head as he denied it with something like ‘I wouldn’t know sweet if it jumped up and bit me on the tail.’

 Yeah. That sounded about right.

 “I hate this guy.” Bones was hard to hear, but Jim could still make it out, probably because it mirrored his own thoughts on the matter.

Jim nodded. “Pompous.”

There was a grunt of agreement, even as they received pitying looks from a few ignorant people surrounding them. “Showboater. Don’t know how we made it past the Van Allen Belt with guys like him in charge.”

“We didn’t. They were the ones that were too smart to get roped into speaking. See? Archer’s practically asleep.”

A large portrait of a young, smiling Winona Kirk was placed before a dais at the front of the room, something that she had been only occasionally, though nobody wanted to be reminded of a sad cipher when there were heroics to be discussed. They’d gone all out with calla lilies, and if Jim hadn’t hated calla lilies before, he definitely did now. Winona had liked simple homespun blossoms, and yellow; daisies and sunflowers, but he supposed that they wouldn’t have been stately enough for the propaganda production they wanted. Not enough gravitas.

 No one had asked for much of his input, which meant that someone, somewhere had a brain cell because he probably wouldn’t have been inclined to give it. Maybe Bones had run some interference for him. He’d have to ask when he started to give a shit again.

Komack stood at a podium behind and to the left of the portrait, surrounded by the Starfleet top brass. Jim would have been up there, but declined that as well as the speech. Instead, they had put him in the front row next to a few dignitaries, several Kelvin survivors, Christine and Jonathan Robau, and some scientists that had been his mother’s colleagues. The only thing he’d asked for in the entire debacle was a seat for Bones at his side.

Jim tried not to look, really he did, but he couldn’t help the way his eyes strayed to the far left. Captain Pike was seated, ridged and stone faced. Normally, the grey at his temples and smile lines on his face just made him more attractive, but when they combined with the purplish-grey bags under his eyes, and was that a bruise? He just looked old. When Pike turned his head slightly to listen to something Captain Garth was saying the bruise was thrown into stark relief, climbing up the curve of his jaw and edging into black eye territory.

“Looks like he ran into a wall.”

“Shoulda given him another one so he could have a matched set.”

“You?” Jim’s mouth fell open.

“Uh huh.”

“You did that? I thought you were a pacifist.”

“Ah, bitchcakes. The Dalai Lama would have socked him one.”

Jim sputtered as his face contorted and turned red. “You bastard.” His voice was whispered and strained. “Don’t make me the guy that laughed at his mom’s funeral.” Len just rubbed Jim’s back as Jim tried to look like he was breaking down in tears of a more appropriate kind.

“Just sayin’.“

He wheezed for another moment or two before he could speak again. “And he just let you?”

Leonard shrugged. “To be fair, he already looked rode hard and put away wet. I suppose that helped the cause.”

“I won’t say he ever handed my ass to me, but the man can fight.”

“I’ll keep that in mind if I feel like hitting him again.”

As if sensing that he was being discussed, Pike turned to look straight at them. Jim quickly averted his eyes to stare over Komack’s shoulder and gripped Bones’ arm.

Leonard shook his arm to get Jim to lighten his grip. “I talked to him a bit.”

“Oh?” Amusement colored Jim’s voice. “Is that what you’re calling it?”

“Talked at him might be more appropriate.”

“Coffee after this. I don’t want to stick around for fruit plates and platitudes. You can tell me about it.”

“Sure. You’re buying.”

“Buying? You think I’m going to have to buy anything for the next few weeks? Look around. I’m surrounded by people who are dying to comfort me in my time of grief. I already have three pies back at the dorm.”

Bones perked up at that. “What kind?”

“Key lime, Chocolate-peanut butter and rhubarb.”

“Gimme the rhubarb and I’ll get the coffee.”

“Deal.”

“Then later on we’ll do this up right and go to a bar so you can tell me about her.”

It was the only time that day that Jim felt anything, let alone close to crying. Oddly enough, it felt good. “You buying there too?”

Bones raised an eyebrow before turning towards the spiritual traffic accident in front of them. How Bones could look so insincere when Jim knew he was nothing but was anyone’s guess. “Pax.”

See, he knew this was why he loved Bones. The bastard just got it.

***

“He said that? He actually threatened to?” Jim looked down at his hands, clasping at his coffee mug, lightly stained with excess cocoa and cream fluff. Girly, but good.

“Yeah. But he was kind of on the wrong side of me at the time. I don’t think he meant it.”

“Did he tell you why?” His voice was deliberately nonchalant, but Leonard had become quite good at deciphering Kirk-speak. He was nervous.

“Just that you hate Starfleet. Though I think he is reading more into that than there is.” It wasn’t quite a lie. Leonard laughed. “If you hated it that much, as smart and reckless as you are? You’d be some sort of swashbuckling space pirate taking on the whole federation.”

Jim laughed too. “With you as my first mate.”

“I don’t swash, kid.”

“I don’t know. I think you could swash like a champ if you tried.” Jim took another sip. “What did you tell him?” Foam had migrated to his upper lip, so he darted out his tongue to catch it.  “He actually could have me drummed out. He has the stroke.”

“He doesn’t have squat, and I told him so.”

Jim raised an eyebrow, but it was no match for Len’s, and the little snot knew it.

 “Don’t ruin your career on my account.”

“No fraternization between  people who are not within two orders of rank. No fraternization between cadets and officers.”

“Right.” Jim smirked. “It happens all the time, and you know it. People just turn the other way and pretend it isn’t happening. It’s systemic.”

“Yeah, true, but you’re forgetting. It all rests on the one with the highest rank. If the other party, meaning you, complains, you’ve forced Starfleet’s hand. They have to prosecute according to the fraternization protocols.”

Frustration colored Jim’s face. “I wouldn’t do that.”

“I know you wouldn’t. But apparently he doesn’t know jack shit about you, ‘cause it shut him up right quick.”

“You’re a good man, Bonesy.”

“I deserve a medal,“ he said, nodding with appropriate gravity.  

Jim threw a stevia packet at him. “What else?”

“Nothing. I told him to do a lateral transfer of your classes and to leave you alone, and that was it. So you’ll get to do it in three.”

Jim found himself absorbed with the café décor, particularly the earthy brushed clay walls with their primitive stencils. “That doesn’t matter so much anymore.”

“Why not?”

Flushing red and ducking his head were atypical Kirk behaviors, but it looked good on him, like he was a little kid caught in some act of mischief. “The Enterprise. I wanted to make her maiden voyage.”

“Pike’s ship?”

“Uh. Yeah. It really doesn’t matter now.”

Leonard whistled. “You’re a real fucked up guy.”

“Fuck, I know. I get that a lot.” Jim looked annoyed at his coffee, wrinkling his nose at the dregs in the cup. “I guess I just want to make sure I’m posted with you, now. I’ll still get it done in time for that.”

“I don’t know if I want a ship, Jim. I might take a space station appointment if they have one open.”

“I’m cool with that. I just need to make sure I’m in the top five percent of my class so I can get better dibs on posting.”

“You’re doing just fine.”

“I’m always doing just fine. I can do better.” Jim looked up and smiled. “Did you know that I used to be a perfect child?”

Leonard snorted.

“Really. Straight A, winning the science fair type stuff. Largest vocabulary and reading levels. Eidetic memory, whiz at math.”

“You don’t have to tell me this.”

“But it was never good enough. If I made a 98 on a test, it wasn’t ‘good job’; it was ‘why isn’t this a hundred? After a while, you realize that you are never going to be good enough. I had it easy. Sam, he wasn’t like me.” Jim shook his head. “Then he left, and I didn’t have a reason to be perfect anymore.”

“No kid should be put in that position.”

“I’m not looking for sympathy, Bones. I’m trying to say something here.” He scratched the back of his neck. “I’m trying to say that I’m done with that.” The empty mug was pushed to the side and he leaned forward on his elbows.

“No holding back. No playing the dumb shit. No fighting. No fucking up.” Jim caught his eyes and held them. “I’m going to be a fucking star. Like a supernova.”

Leonard sucked in a breath, because he could see for the first time the aesthetic quality that made Jim a magnet for some. “I know you could. But don’t do this just because you’re hurting. It’ll eat you and spit you out. Don’t do it just because Pike pissed you off.”

“I would be mad at you for that, but I know I’ve given you cause.” He closed his eyes and sighed. “I don’t care about Pike. Not just Pike, anyway. I’ve let others dictate who I am for way too long. I’m sick of it.”

“I know the feeling.”

“I thought you would. So believe me when I say- not for Pike, not my mom, not even for George Kirk.”

They were quiet for a while as a waitress came by with two more drinks, as Jim let Leonard chew on his words. When she left, he opened his mouth to speak and then shut it again. It was yet another minute before he actually said something, and when he did it sounded pained. “Hell. Make me feel like a jackass.”

Jim pulled back in query. “Huh?”

“You need company with that?”

Confused wasn’t Jim’s best look, but it was growing on him. “With what?”

“My mother raised me to be a gentleman, but the wife wrung it out of me. I need to find the old me again too.”

“Please. You’re fine.”

“Kid, you aren’t blind, and you just got done telling me you aren’t stupid. I’ve been a mess for a long time. ”

The cheeky grin was back, and Len couldn’t begin to say how much he had missed it. “A hot mess. Let you puke on me, didn’t I? Don’t sell yourself short.”

“Like I said. You’re a real fucked up guy.”

“James Tiberius Fucked-Up Kirk.”

“I like the sound of that. It’s got a ring.”

“Like my cock.”

“Okay. We’re getting out of here. I know you’re better when you start on that shit.” Bones signaled for the check and waited until the waitress brought a CHIP so he could transfer credits. They both stood up and headed to the front door. Leonard reached the door first and held it open for Jim. They fell into step together and let their feet carry them towards Bone’s dorm as if by mutual accord.

“I’m in practice, you know. If I’m turning over this leaf thing, you’re going to get the brunt of my childishness. The run off that I can’t vent anywhere else.  Just warning you.”

“Rapture.”

“Sarcasm. Lowest form of humor, my friend.” Jim put his arm around Bones and gave him a squeeze. He held it for just a little too long before pulling back and sticking his hands in his pockets, looking anywhere that wasn’t Leonard McCoy.

Jim had run the gamut today. Automaton. Slightly hysterical. Humorous, self-effacing, embarrassed, touch starved and disgusted in turn. Now he was working on sheepish and Leonard was having a hell of a time figuring out where the real Jim stood. Maybe some of it all. Poor kid.

Poor, wretched kid.

“Seriously. Thanks. I don’t know how I would have gotten through this.”

“You do all right.”

“No. Not really. But I’m going to. ” Jim shrugged as much as he was able as they walked together. “Uh. I know you wanted to go to a bar tonight, but do you think that maybe we could just stay in tonight and drink? Just you and me.”

“Sure.”

Relief flashed over his face for a moment, and then it was gone. “But none of that Saurian crap. I want vodka. And limes.”

Len grumbled a bit. “Fine. But you pony up the chocolate peanut butter pie too.”

***

He had sworn that he wouldn’t do this. That he was over it, that he didn’t need to go looking for trouble, or interfere, or any number of things that amounted to the same thing. If he needed reminding he dug his fingers into his cheek, until the pain faded.

That lasted about a week. Even then, he tried to keep his curiosity contained by what was available on the internal network.

He held out for two more.

The information available on the network was sketchy and watered down, more palatable than it should have been, and still he felt like a voyeur as he pulled up grainy images and dry summaries. That was why he found himself in the library, feeling furtive and not quite knowing why, asking for a private study booth when there was nothing secretive about what he was doing.

But knowing something and feeling it are two different things, and he definitely felt like a peeping Tom or a sex offender as he input the holos into the viewer. He’s seen some of them before, but not like this.

As a captain he’d had to make some tough, often brutal, decisions, but never anything so-

Dust. Dry. Everything was sepia toned and desiccated. Crops withered into kindling and then nothing at all as the topsoil was carried away in fierce winds that ate at everything in their path.

Bleak. So barren and alien, even after the deserts of his youth.

Buildings. Basic Terran terraforming PODs corroded beyond salvation. Yurts of local stone hastily erected with no sanitation and minimal skill. Rough barracks. Fenced yards. Tents for ‘entertainment.’ Grand government palace kept as free and clean of the riff-raff as possible. Photos of rooms filled with items taken from the homes of those savagely culled.

Let them eat cake.

Bodies. What was left of them. Sunken mass graves that contained bones covered in knife marks. Tooth identification. One pit. Then three. Then ten. A dozen odd huts with strange vents that turned out to be smokehouses. Salt stores and spits.

The faces. The faces got him the most. Sepia zombies, emaciated and without hope, shuffling in line. One small girl, so delicate, wrists so fragile looking on arms defined only by bone. Even as the relief ship had come, no hope sparked in the faces of the rescued.  He had to look away when a ship doctor came into view and he could compare his moisture-lush, well fed flesh to the scarecrow he was treating.

Starfleet had rescued them in body only. And barely that.

He played the holo again. And again. Watching the faces as they went by, only about 200 in all in this holo. Wondering, with every child, if it was him. Is he the one? Impossible to tell, but trying anyway, to find some trace of Jim in khaki, sunken cheeks and haunted eyes.

And again.

A new holo. Another scene. A crowd of faces that all looked the same. Again. Pausing on every face, looking at every feature. Again.

Again. And again. And again.

He won’t sleep that night. Or the next. He knows this, even after he loads the next holo. And the next.

After hours- days- weeks- When he finally got up it was full dark, and he was hungry, but the armchair shellshock left him unable to stomach the idea of food.

He may never feel like eating again.

When he left and caught the sight of Jim at a table, surrounded by PADDs and books, intent on an assignment, he had to stop himself from running, even as he averted his eyes and felt like a dirty thing. Bad luck or divine punishment.

And he hated the fact that he was right. He doesn’t sleep that night. Or the next. Maybe he’s a masochist, but he took comfort in it. Sleep was for a clear conscience.

And he was fresh out of that.

 

 **  
Chapter 7**

 **  
_  
There is something terribly morbid in the modern sympathy with pain. One should sympathize with the colour, the beauty, the joy of life. The less said about life's sores the better. ~ Oscar Wilde_   
**

 

 

Lieutenant Commander Suul’s survival class was letting out of a small lecture hall, students speaking in twos and threes as they began their diaspora into the rest of the building.

Waiting next to the door, Pike was easily ignored as the students streamed by, focused on other issues. Jim Kirk was speaking in low tones with two other cadets, illustrating his point with hand gestures and dynamism, and didn’t see him as he passed.

Pike waited patiently as Jim finished his conversation with a smile and a goodbye, shouldering his messenger bag and turning. When Kirk caught sight of him the smile faltered only briefly before being firmly pasted back into place. He adjusted his pack with a slight fumble and shied to the side as if he remembered an important engagement.

Pike started after him. “Cadet Kirk.”

Jim kept on moving at an even pace that made it clear that he wasn’t running away. Pike easily caught up to him, and his phony grin and brittle eyes. “I’d like to speak to you.”

“I’ve got it covered. I’m prepping for a HALO jump into hostile territory. After touchdown we need to destroy signs of passage and then start on the recovery op. Me’eel is going to scan in bursts- recon work, that’s her strength. I’m still working on the others. Six people. Four rescue, two victims. Kind of large for this assignment, but doable. “

“Jim.”

“Forty kilometers, but only about half is hostile. Still, I would feel more comfortable moving the hide site every twenty hours even after recovery and leaving the red zone. Definitely no longer than 72, but that’s worst case scenario and only with good BLISS coverage. I’m already dividing up duties, and I know the two being ‘rescued’ will be given a hypo cocktail to simulate something, but I’ve no idea what. Two more weeks to prep.”

“I’m trying to talk to you.”

“Of course. About my survival training, right? Because if you were trying to speak to me about something else, I would have to respectfully decline, Captain.”

Pike grabbed his arm and pulled Jim to the side, into an alcove with a water dispenser. Jim allowed himself to be pulled, but yanked his arm back when they came to a stop.

“Is this ethical?”

“He told you about that?”

“He tells me everything.”

Pike snorted and Jim’s eyes sharpened on him, but he didn’t say anything.

“A lapse in judgment,” Pike said.

“Agreed. I have a class to get to.” He tried to turn, but Pike put himself in front of him, eyes searching Jim’s face.

“Your next class isn’t for another hour.”

“I have notes to go over.”

“I have an apology to make.”

Eyes narrowed before Jim threw his head back and grinned. “Oh. Nice. Make it to the wall. It can be my proxy. It gives as much of a damn.”

“I know I got things wrong. I was an idiot. I need you to know that. I still want to help.”

“Help by being somewhere else. I don’t need your type of help. I’m doing great- even better- on my own.”

“I didn’t mean that type of help.”

“What? Emotionally? Is this your midlife crisis? Because it’s coming on a little early.”

“Don’t deliberately twist everything I say.”

“Explains the car, though.”

“Fuck. Jim. I’m sorry.”

“Yes. You are. And unsubtle. You think this little confessional isn’t going to be hot gossip? Current rumor says I tossed you over when I found out about your hot affair with my mom. Or dad. “His hand went out, tilting from left to right. “It’s a bit vague on which.”

“I didn’t know. I didn’t know about any of it. I made a stupid leap of logic, and I’m sorry. I don’t know if I can make it up to you, but I am sorry.”

“I get it. Now shove off. Sir.” He concluded with a stream of Klingon dialect and walked away, posture stiff and upright as people around them pretended to be absorbed in something else.

Pike wasn’t great at Klingon, and downright pitiful at the more complex dialects, but he could understand a word in seven or so.

But everyone learned how to cuss first.

***

“Hey.”

Jim looked up from Leonard’s bed, where he had spread out various study aids. He had been spending more and more time in Bones’ dorm since his roommate was a dick that kept looking at him funny and the girl at the front desk had become a bitch after he had turned her down. Leonard had though Jim was joking until he had met them. He’d  been more sympathetic and less likely to kick Jim out, after.

“There’s a desk for that.”

“Not as comfy.” Jim went back to his notes, pushing up the glasses that had begun to slide down his nose. Not that he would have been caught dead in front of anyone else wearing them.

“Can you please move it to the desk?”

Jim sighed, but complied, piling everything up into the crook of his elbow and sticking a pen between his teeth. He repatriated the desk with his stuff then grabbed a pillow from Bones’ bed to stick under his ass. “Better?”

“You okay?”

“Yeah. Just have this survival thing soon.”

Leonard removed his uniform, hanging it neatly, before stripping off his underclothes and hopping into the shower. He was only a few minutes washing off the scent of hospital and academics, but was still surprised when he came back into the room toweling his hair and found Jim still bent over a text.

“It’s Friday afternoon.”

“Mnhm.” Jim still didn’t look up. The pen had migrated behind his ear and the glasses were sliding down again, and the whole thing was so enduring Len wished he had a camera. The photo would look great on the dorm bulletin board. Might even make up for the painful demise Jim would surely visit upon him.

“We going out? Grab a bite to eat and then go to that one bar.” Words slightly muffled as he finished drying his face. “The one with that singing alien of indeterminate gender and the two pianos. I got head in the restroom and you got robbed for a change. It was sweet.”

“I don’t think so.”

Leonard grabbed clothes from the small bureau and sat on the bed to put on socks and his briefs. “You said the same thing last week. And the week before that.  And you turned down that Trill. I had to man up and hit that instead.”

“I’ve been busy.”

“Too busy for a Trill? She had the opening stanzas of the Zero G Xeno Kama Sutra tattooed on her ass. She was a contortionist.”

“I’ve got to be on top of this.” Jim took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes before turning towards Bones, who was pulling on a t-shirt.

“On top of, not bogged down by. I don’t want you to burn out.” Bones stood up to slide into a pair of favorite worn jeans.

Jim looked wary, but nodded, letting his pen drop to the desktop. He removed his glasses and sat them down before running his hand over his eyes. They felt gritty and tired, were probably bloodshot. And maybe Bones was on to something, because his brain didn’t feel as absorbent as usual. And, fuck him sideways. He had turned down a Trill.

“So, as your doctor, I am prescribing a night of fun, and no study.”

It was hard not to smile at that, and Jim laughed, getting up and coming over to stand by the bed.

“Have you seen my goddamn belt?”

“Yeah.” Jim lifted his shirt and undid the buckle, sliding the leather out of his pant loops with a swish of friction.

Leonard took the belt with minimal, but expected, bitching, and slid it though his own loops. “What are you? Twelve? Ask a man before you use his stuff.”

Jim smirked. “Used your razor too.”

“Of course you did.”

“Sorry.” Jim sighed. “This emotional maturity shit takes a lot out of a guy.”

“I wouldn’t know.” Leonard ducked, but Jim glared at him instead of lobbing a projectile.

“You’d be proud. Commander Kopriva started comparing me to my dad today and I didn’t tell him to get stuffed.”

 “That would have gone over like a lead balloon. He’s married to a species that reproduces by attaching birthing pouches to their mate.”

“Oh. Eww.”

“You have no idea.”

“Quit distracting me with gross medical pouch sex.” He paused while Leonard got a snicker out of his system. “Pike approached me today.” Which shut-up Bones quick-smart.

“You alright?”

“Yes. Maybe. He apologized.”

“Pfft.” Leonard sat back down, leaning on his elbows. His shirt rode up, and he scowled, pulling it back down as Jim raised a pointed eyebrow at his belly button.

“Yeah. I told him.”

“And I told him to stay away from you.” He flexed his fist as if it was remembering just what explosive contact with other flesh felt like.

“I don’t think he’s going to let you hit him again.”

“A man can dream, can’t he?” Oh yeah. Another black eye. Maybe knock loose a few teeth.

“He told me something too. Implied it, actually. You know, don’t you? He told you.”

That derailed Len’s train of thought neatly. Well fuck Pike right in the ear with a football bat. But Leonard was who he was and didn’t pretend ignorance. He was caught out, now he just needed to weather the fallout. “Yes.”

“He had no right.”

Len nodded in sympathy, treading fragile ground, even if Jim appeared to be steady. You could never be quite sure what was going on underneath. It was one of the more attractive, and dangerous, aspects of his personality. “It was a shit thing to do. All of it, but that too.”

“I didn’t tell you. I didn’t want you to think-“ Less of me. That I’m weak. “Damn it. I’m not broken.”

Low, measured, well-modulated vocals so he didn’t get Jim’s hackles up. “I didn’t think you were. You just got dealt the most shit hand in the galaxy. I respect anyone who can come through that as good as you did. I couldn’t even handle a fucking divorce, and that happens all the time, every day. Of course you aren’t broken.”

“I felt broken, for a while.” Jim made a fist and tapped it against a jittering leg. “But I’m feeling better about it. I am better. I just need to make it obvious to everyone else.”

“I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want you to get all skittish. I don’t see you any different. I’m not going to piss and moan about how you got to be who you are now, because I like who you are now and the two are tied together.”

“When I’m not being an asshole.”

“You’re my kind of asshole.” He hoped his grin helped diffuse how tense things had become.

“Yeah. Guess I am.”

And he scored, because Jim relaxed just a hair.

 “Look. I’m not going to pressure you. But I’m here if you need me.”

“I don’t-“

“Hush, you.” He went pensive as he gathered his thoughts. “Remember, you come to me if you need me. I can handle it. It isn’t pity. You hate that shit as much as I do.” Jim looked like he wanted to argue, but Leonard glared him down. “It isn’t. Because what you don’t understand is that I might need you too. Just as much. There. I said it, and you calling me a girl won’t change the fact that it’s true. So suffer.”

“Oh, nice.”

“Shut up.”

“Mutually co-dependent.”

“I’ll kill you.”

“Like a Venusian soap opera and shit.”

“Dammit, Jim.” Leonard pulled Jim down and next to him so that they sat shoulder to shoulder. It was becoming a common position to find them in. “Trying to have a poignant moment, here.”

Spine slumped, artificial smile dented, Jim leaned into him and went boneless. “Shit. I know. I’ll stop. I just get uncomfortable. Sometimes.”

“I always wanted you to grow up, Jimmy. But I didn’t want you to have to do it this way. I meant what I said. You got a shit hand. But your luck is turning as long as you take the opportunities that are coming.”

“Sounds like something a dad would say.”

“Good. I need to get some practice in for when Jo is old enough to be bitter about her old man.”

“Old man. Ha. Sexy when you grump.” Jim laughed, then grabbed his stomach to laugh even harder. “Wow. I guess I do have a daddy issue after all. Fuckin’ creepy.”

“Join the club, kid.” And, what the hell. Quid pro quo he figured. Leonard pulled out a wallet and dug around for a minute before pulling out a photo to hand Jim. It was worn and raw along the edges, with a slight dog ear in the corner, a photo of a happier time. Himself and his father, Jo-jo, tiny on his hip in a white eyelet sundress that only stayed white for about two minutes after the photo. Already his dad was looking frail and gaunt, but he had still been optimistic, full of himself and his abilities.  Ah, the smile of a bulletproof moron.

Jim traced the figures with a reverent finger. “You had all that in Georgia, Bones?”

“I’m from Mississippi.”

“That’s the same thing though.”

“Yeah. I guess it kinda is, now.” Now that he wouldn’t ever be back.

“She was a bitch.” Jims finger stabbed at the photo, skewering a woman who wasn’t even there.  
   
“See, that’s the thing. She wasn’t.”  
   
“But-“

“Jim, sometimes things just get too broken to fix. It isn’t only one person’s fault. Yeah, she could have handled it better. But I coulda’ been there more. Been more available, less of a mess over my dad. Lots of things. You don’t know what it was like. You think I was fucked up when we first met? I was already doing better by then.  I’m hopin’ she just needs some time. Then I can see Jo.”

“I hope she just needs some time too. She’s a cute kid.” Jim’s cheek creased into a parenthesis if mirth. “Like her dad. Scowly.”

“Thanks.”

Jim turned over on his stomach and rested his chin on crossed arms, still looking at the photo. “How do you know when things are too broke to fix? How did you know?”

“Lamps flying at your head are a pretty good indicator.”

“Ah. I was expecting something a bit more deep there. Some psychological epiphany type thing. Really, lamps?”

“You know what they say, about wanting in one hand and shitting in the other.”

“Pervert.”

“Ha! Yeah.” Leonard took the photo back, looking at it almost wistfully before placing it face down on the dresser. Then he laid back and stared at the ceiling as he started talking about his father, and euthanasia, expectations, and children, and second chances. They paused much later to order a pizza and lament the lack of a beer delivery service, but neither said anything about going out.

They spoke softly, long into the night, before drifting off where they lay. Leonard had thought Jim already asleep, but he should have known better.

 Kid always needed the last word.

“Hey Bones?”

“Hmm?”

“Maybe there’s something to this talking about shit after all.”

“Go to sleep, Jim.”

“Okay.”

Leonard could hear Jim turning, but couldn’t see him in the dark of the room.

“And Bones?”

“What?” This time he let annoyance creep into his voice.

“I don’t tell you enough, but I appreciate it.”

“Appreciate what?’

“All of it. You.”

The darkness around them stretched, blending with the silent calm like a mutual Synaesthesia. It could have turned uncomfortably maudlin after a night of confidences, but Leonard had an easy cure for that.

“Girl.”

“Grump.”

“Infant.”

“Geriatric.”

“A geriatric who needs his beauty sleep. Goodnight.”

Jim shifted once again, pulling at the sheet to cocoon himself. “Yeah. G’nite.”

***

Jim took his advice, mostly, though Len had to tell him to take a break more often than not. They developed a routine that worked. If Jim wasn’t off risking his damn neck jumping off of something, or piloting something or hanging off of something, they got together Friday nights to eat, and stayed in to watch holos or play cards (or one embarrassing night, mah jong) with the nurses next door. Saturdays were spent studying, and Saturday nights were for going out. Months later, when Leonard started dating a xenobiologist in his program, he still reserved the Fridays for the kid.

Even so, it was still a few more months before he realized something strange was happening.

His date with Genevieve had ended early, so he went back to his dorm to change, and probably call Jim to see what he was doing. He had just turned the corner into his hallway when he paused. A girl was leaving his room, Jim steering her out with a broad palm in her lumbar area. She turned and smiled, giggled a little, seemed familiar, despite the fact that she was relatively nondescript in a completely unoffensive way.

Jim smiled back, that stupid tomcat smile, and alarm bells went off in Len’s head. He couldn’t believe that people fell for that shit. Campus full of geniuses and most of ‘em dumber than dirt. Jim hadn’t been fucking around much lately, and his smile held too much calculation for Len to be comfortable.

Mrs. Giggles was walking away to the other exit, so Leonard felt it was safe to approach. Jim turned his smile to him as he approached, dimming the wattage and lessening the fuck-me aspect that had colored it. He lost the smile altogether when Leonard leveled him a look that screamed bullshit.

“Hi.”

“Get your ass inside.”

“I didn’t fuck her on your bed. She was here twenty minutes, tops.”

“Damn right. I would have felt bad, having to kill you and all.”

Blessed relief filled the atmosphere. “Then what’s the problem? You know I wouldn’t do that.” Jim gave him the soulful eyes.

“That look doesn’t work on people with kids. And I know you wouldn’t do that. But you are up to something.”

“I don’t know what you mean.” Jim tried to look pious for a minute, but his lips started twitching until he could no longer hold in a laugh.

“I’m serious. What are you up to? You’ve been acting a bit strange, but I had assumed it was your workload this far into the semester.”

“Oh, hell. I know. Killing me.”

“But this?” Len raised both brows in question. “That girl ain’t your type. And don’t joke about not having one beyond breathing. You like ‘em leggy and different. That girl was a space faring milkmaid.”

“Maybe I wanted to try something a bit different.”

“Maybe you’re full of it. And weren’t you dating that green whatsis? Orion girl? Computer programming. Thought you were into serial monogamy now.”

Jim turned away and sat in the office chair, looking out the window. Leonard sat on the bed to wait, not pushing, but expectant.

“Fuck. I don’t want to tell you.”

“She’s in programming too, isn’t she? That’s where I recognize her from.”

“Yeah.” Jim crossed his arms and rested his head with an exhale. “I’m an asshole. Yeah, I’ve got something on the burner, but I’m not going to tell you. Full deniability.”

“Nothing to get you kicked out, is it?”

“No.” The word was a little hiccup.

“And the girls?”

“Gaila- she’s just smoking hot. Should be too smart to date me, but she isn’t. Alien pheromones are non-discriminatory . I was dating her before, but she’s the one who inadvertently gave me the idea. Orions don’t even have a word for fidelity, so don’t go there.”

“And the other.”

Jim lifted his head again, looking wretched with guilt. “Jessie- I don’t have an excuse. I am an asshole.”

“You know, this is the same type of thing that Pike accused you of.”

Jim flinched, but didn’t argue the low, but deserving, blow.

“I know the Orion doesn’t make a shit, their hormones are all over the map, but that intern.”

“Jeez. I’ve been telling myself the same shit for a week.”

“I’m not mad at you. I just want you to think about what you’re doing. I don’t care what Pike said. You aren’t like this. And don’t make him think you are.”

“I don’t feel good about it, if that’s what you want to know. I have to do this. I’m already this far.” Jim put his hands out, palms facing Leonard, in a placating gesture. “ I’ll start letting her down easy. She already knows it isn’t a long-term thing. I’ll just tell her I’m too busy with classes. I’ll talk to Gaila too.”

“Just- don’t make it a habit. I’m not best friends with that type of sleazebag.”

“I promise.”

“Ok. But you have to make it up to her.”

“How am I going to do that?”

“Aren’t you always bragging about how well you know women?”

“Pfft. Yeah. In bed. It’s not like I’m buying something for her clitoris. Their brains though. They’re wacky and they want crazy things. She has nail polish called Sewer Juice.”

The long pause was telling.

“Shit. I want to argue that, but I’ve got nothing.”

 **  
**

**Chapter 8**

 **  
_  
“Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from an indomitable will.” ~ Mahatma Gandhi_   
**

 

 

Everyone knew something was coming.

Bones knew it. Even if he hadn’t caught Jim with his hand in the cookie jar, no way would he have missed those telling smirks as he researched and made secretive notes.  He disappeared for weekends at a time and came back smelling like an Orion pleasure slave, which wasn’t anything new, but the pages and pages of programming code definitely was.

He didn’t have enough programming experience to make head or tail of it, but Kirk had a rock solid foundation, a real flair for computers, and anything he lacked in particular knowledge was certainly made up for by Gaila. Len had dug a little, and found out that despite looking like the dizziest green cheerleader on the planet, she was also a bit of a computer wunderkind. It also made him a bit uncomfortable that it surprised him, since he thought he was above stereotyping, and was also well versed in Orion physiology and pheromones.

Then he found out that she had been a pleasure slave, which made him feel like ten kinds of asshole. She was also kind and considerate, and brought him a sandwich when she brought one for Jim, then opened his wardrobe and critiqued his casual clothes and discussed oddball physics theory at the same time. When her pheromone cycle peaked she was polite enough to not visit his dorm.

In another life, or even later on in this one, she would have been perfect for Jim. Bubbly and brilliant, but she had the depth and conviction of a survivor, the kind that made someone beautiful instead of just pretty, and the determination to live life to its fullest. If any woman had what it took to snare Jim, it was probably her.

Jim just didn’t have it in him, not at the moment.

He was dating her, liked her a lot, but Leonard would catch him looking at Gaila with a squirrelly look on his face, one that looked vaguely disbelieving. Of course, Jim used to look at Leonard like that too, but stopped sometime during first year. He didn’t want to linger over what it meant.

Jim had been giving him some different looks recently, and he couldn’t put a name to them either. But it did cement one thing in Leonard’s mind.

The kid was up to something all right, by his own admission, even. Leonard knew he wasn’t going to like it one damn bit, no matter what Jimmy said. And if it bit Len on the ass too?

Maybe he should requisition a hypo or three in case he needed to reassign Jim’s gender.

***

Pike had his own theories.

After his apology he sat down and gave himself a stern talking to. Things had gone to shit with Jim. Yes, it was mostly his fault. For being blinded by his own assumptions, for letting things get out of hand, for finding Jim as seductive as cheesecake on a shit-hot fork.

That was where he went wrong. It wasn’t when he opened his mouth and let out a stream of viciousness he didn’t even really believe.  It was long before that, before his cock overruled his brain and he became Kirk’s advisor, even before Iowa.

He’d been bored. Landlocked ennui. He hated being grounded.

Space- the vastness, the possibility, the excitement of living in the now and that indefinable moment when he made a decision that worlds turned on- even the thought had him half-hard, but it wasn’t really a sexual thing. He even missed the tedium of long trips, expanses of nothing filled with the soothing hum of nacelles if he stuck his hand against the inner hull next to his bed. It had a meditational quality that even the relentless paperwork couldn’t destroy. He knew who and what he was in space. Space defined him, more than any words or uniform could hope to.

He wasn’t the person on the ground that he was in the black. Everything here was disjointed and wrong. He had a life up there. Here, he had a town home that still looked like a showplace because he was never there, and colleagues, not friends; mutual fucks, not lovers. He had oversight of his ship, which was so close to launch he could taste the dilithium, but it had been years of wait and brief hops off world were poor panacea. Busywork. Paperwork, teaching, glad handing the people that expected it.  But none of it was real like space was real. He was in his prime and had years to find his way on earth when he was too doddering to command a ship.

 Everything real, and good, and Christopher Pike was in the fucking stars, and maybe that’s where he went wrong because maybe he saw the same restless wanting thing in some farm boy in a shit bar in Iowa.

Damn if he didn’t. So angry, flippant and out of step, so high on adrenaline and blood because blood was real, and it was his, and it helped ground you when it felt like every other tether and cable had snapped. Sex worked briefly, because you could lie to yourself that the other person might just feel a bit of the same, but with blood, you could see it, and the visual cue could be more stimulating to the mind than ten empty orgasms.

He should have treated it. Drained the wound, nursed its infected edges before it got too out of hand, before James Goddamned Kirk sounded like a good idea.

Should have stepped up. Been completely the Captain here as much as he was in orbit, instead of becoming obsessed with Pike 2.0, trying to shape him from potential and raw material.

They had joked about it, but Chris thought that maybe he was the one with the issue after all, because what else would you call it when you wanted to fuck the person you tried to create in your own image? Narcissism?

When he laid it out, dispassionately, in his own mind, he conceded that it sounded a bit psychotic. In actual practice though, it had been- intense, amazing like the stars were amazing and just touching him for those brief moments was like freefall in space. Satisfaction, marrow deep, taken in finding something so real in a world of make-believe. Sublime.

He knew Kirk now, now that it was too little, too late, now that he had the bits and pieces and the tees crossed. Chris hadn’t succeeded after all, hadn’t managed to duplicate himself. Instead, he had added to a work already in progress, fire that tempered. Added another straw to the camel, another weight to the world, but instead of crippling Jim it had honed him like a fucking razor.

He was dealing with it. Better than Chris was.

Pike knew Jim now. Inside and outside. In his head and deep in his body where Pike had touched too soon, too hard, too briefly. Yeah, he knew Jim.

And that was how he knew Jim was up to something too.

***

Pike was in the overhead again, looking down, and he realized as soon as Kirk entered the room that things had come to a head. He recognized that smile, that strut, the way he looked at McCoy, as if to say: wait till you get a load of this.

“We are receiving a distress signal from the U.S.S. Kobayashi Maru. The ship has lost power and is stranded. Starfleet Command has ordered us to rescue them.”

“Captain.”

“Starfleet Command has ordered us to rescue them—Captain.”

Annoyance flashed in Uhura’s voice as she glared, and Chris felt for her, really, even though her behavior could be considered questionable, because if anyone’s behavior was fishy here, it was James’. That fucker. He wasn’t taking it seriously, even though they had given him another shot at the test after tanking his last one so thoroughly. They cited trauma, and compromised decision making and poor Jim, which was all true, but Jim should have been on his knees thanking the testing board instead of thumbing his nose at them. He wanted to stop the test and drag him out by his ear. Tell him not to do it.

“Klingon vessels have entered the Neutral Zone and they are firing upon us.”

“That’s okay.”

Oh no. Don’t do it, Jim. Don’t you fucking do it. It became his mantra, and as he looked at McCoy, he could see something similar playing out behind that ever-present scowl.

“Yeah, don’t worry about it.”

Chris’ forehead hit the glass in front of him. Behind him, he could hear a bit of activity, and an incredulous “Did he just say that,” which perfectly matched the looks of bewilderment on several of the cadets’ faces.

Jim. Jim. Jim. Jim. Jim.

McCoy spoke up, and said something appropriate to the situation, but all Chris heard was ‘what the fuck are you doing?’

“They’re firing, Captain. All of them.”

“Alert medical bay to prepare to receive all crew members from the damaged ship.”

He sounded lazy and post coital, sharpening only briefly when Uhura questioned him. Fleeing, leaving the overhead so he wouldn’t have to see sounded appealing, but a morbid need to know how this played out kept him glued to the glass.

“Alert medical.”

“We’re being hit, shields at sixty percent.”

Still more flippancy in return.

“Should we at least, oh, I dunno—fire back?”

“Mmm—no.”

That was all the warning Pike had, in the moments before things went weird. Before the lights flickered, and around him panels of information blanked out, consoles dead or blinking erratically.  Technicians buzzed nervously around him as they tried to figure out what just happened.

Pike could have told them. In the moment before everything powered down, something indefinable had curled Jim’s lips and settled into those unnatural blue eyes, making a brief home for itself.

What came next was no surprise, just a confirmation. The next minute blended together a bit in his mind as he tried to process just what had happened, what the ramifications were. Lights came up, power back on.

“The Kobayashi Maru is still in distress. But—the Klingons have stopped firing.” Uhura sounded punch drunk. “They are dropping shields and powering down their weapons.”

“Fire on all enemy ships. One photon each should do. No reason to waste munitions.”

“Signal the Kobayashi Maru. Tell them they are now safe and their rescue is assured. Begin rescue of the stranded crew.”

“Anything else?” This time, Kirk looked up at the overhead viewer, and Pike was ready to swear that Jim was looking directly at him, despite the one-way glass. And he was smiling.

There was an even bigger flutter behind him, but Pike couldn’t bring himself to participate. Instead, he closed his eyes and focused on breathing.

Fuck.

***

When Leonard McCoy answered the door, he didn’t look happy, but he did look all yelled out. He didn’t look surprised either, just gave him an evil eye and leaned in the doorway with arms crossed like he’s the bad guy in some forgotten spaghetti western.

“Is Jim here?”

There is movement within the room, and McCoy straightens with a shrug before stepping aside to let Chris pass. He leaves barely enough room for him to squeeze by, and Chris has his number, but can’t fault the man for trying to get a leg up in a potential confrontation.

He was good at intimidation. If McCoy hadn’t been one of God’s own doctors, he would have pushed for him in command.

Jim is standing in the middle of the room, back to him, wearing casual clothes, sneakers and jeans.

“Can I speak to you alone?”

Chris can hear a cough of protest from behind, but Jim just half turns and nods, and that was apparently enough to make the doctor subside.

“Both of you! I swear. If your brains were trilithium you couldn’t blow your nose. I’ll go walk around the quad. But if you think I won’t come down on you like the hammer of God if you can’t behave yourselves, then you don’t-“

“Bones. Later. Please?” It was very polite, but firm.

Chris couldn’t tell which of them had McCoy venting his spleen- probably both, but he was gratified all the same when he closed the door, leaving him alone with Jim.

It would have felt nice, if things weren’t so grave.

“Do you want to explain to me what you were trying to accomplish?”

“There was no try about it. I beat the K.M.” Jim turned fully to look at him, looking satisfied. Practically serene.

“Beat it? You hacked the test.”

"Never forget that no military leader has ever become great without audacity. If the leader is filled with high ambition and if he pursues his aims with audacity and strength of will, he will reach them in spite of all obstacles."

“Clausewitz. Part of your thesis. ” No use pretending he hadn’t read it. He was sure Jim would know.

“Old Carl had a point. You even said it when you got on your soapbox in that bar. Something Starfleet’s lost, yeah? Overly disciplined. Fossilizing. That all equals a lack of audacity, wouldn’t you agree?”

Chris inclined his head and remained standing even as Jim sat on the sofa, free and easy, arm spread across the back of the chair. It threw his delts into high relief and the sleeve rode up, exposing just a curl of dark hair. Not smell, but sense-memory made him want to bury his head there. Not rushed or angry this time. Time to get slow and dirty and really appreciate sweat and semen and the taste of it on skin.

“It wasn’t cheating. Look at the mission brief. No limits defined, other than the fact that a rescue attempt must be made. Short and sweet. I just didn’t solve it in the way they expected. They want particular answers, they should start with  particular questions.”

“You know they don’t see it that way. You had to know it would come down to this. Some of them want to make an example of you. Some of them have been wanting to nail you to a wall for a while, and you just handed yourself over.”

“Yes. But isn’t this what you wanted? Someone who would use their knowledge and improvise? Jump off a fucking cliff? I thought that’s what we were about. If you thought I’d sit back and smile and nod and do things by rote just to graduate, you could have saved your breath in Iowa.”

“This is different. You could be dishonorably discharged.”

“Begin as you mean to go on. I picked that thesis for a reason. I don’t know, call it lingering sentiment over how we met. Audacity. Audeo. I dare. Yeah, I fucking dared.”

“And if you get kicked out?”

“Then I get kicked out. I honestly don’t care.” And he didn’t. Pike could see that perfectly. Jim’s eyes were smiling and he looked confident in a way he never had before. He had been brash, cocky, but never centered and satisfied with who and what he was.

“I don’t have to prove myself to anybody else.” Jim raised a self-mocking eyebrow. “Not anymore. My own terms, or not at all.” He looked thoughtful. “I’m James T. Kirk. I lost sight of that for a long time, you know, but now? I can do anything I feel like doing. I don’t need Starfleet for that. I don’t need to be George Kirk’s son for that. The private sector won’t know what hit it.”

“No regrets.” It wasn’t a question. More of an acknowledgement.

There was still a nod of agreement. “I made the only decision I could live with. I want no problems meeting my own face in a mirror. If I let myself get pinned in place by expectations instead of innovation, just so the admiralty can sit back and admire their handiwork and fucking test scores, I don’t know that I could. Win the test and go down in history, or perform adequately and lose. There was no question.”

“What about McCoy? Are you just going to ditch him?” And me. But he couldn’t say that without sounding insane. Or obsessed, even though he would admit to a bit of both.

“He’s still my best friend. On a starship or a space station, in the next room or light-years away. I don’t need my hand held and he doesn’t need a friend that requires maintenance. That’s what ex-wives are for.” Jim rolled his neck as if working out a kink and let the corner of his mouth lift in amusement. “Do you really think I’m going down for this? I’m your former protégé. Please. If you can't dazzle them with your Knowledge, then baffle them with your Bullshit. Create a class on social engineering and I’ll teach it for you, I’m that good.” Jim turned his head to look out the window, and Chris had the feeling that he was being dismissed.  “By the time I’m done with that hearing they’ll be giving me a commendation for original thinking.”

And Jim was looking into the dimming light, hair turned gold, skin warmed by the sun. His tan contrasting with his white t-shirt and perfect, even teeth. Focused. Empowered.

Exceptional in every way.

Jim had become everything Pike had wanted for him. More, because this Jim wasn’t predicated on the idea of what or who Chris Pike allowed him to be.

And it was beautiful.

Almost too beautiful to look at.

He had to leave, was leaving, when Kirk’s voice stopped him.

“Hey, Pike?”

“What is it?” His voice sounded hoarse in his own ears.

“This. It isn’t an unwinnable scenario.”

It was probably the closest to don’t worry he would ever hear. It also made a sort of optimistic sense. Compared to everything else the kid had managed to pull off in his time- “No. It isn’t.”

***

“Well?” McCoy was leaning against a support in the hallway, waiting for him to leave.

“Well, what?”

“Are you going to help the kid or not?”

The doctor probably deserved some sort of explanation, but what to tell him? How did he explain why he wouldn’t do it, even though he could easily whisper in the right ears- had planned on it before coming here. That he felt and understood in his gut Jim’s need to handle this to the end, damn the torpedoes. Jim was strong, a fighter; he had to prove his mettle. If he was going to be Captain someday he had to handle worse than a pissy ivory tower inquiry. Murderous Klingons. Romulan deceit.

Chris admired it, even though he feared the outcome.

So hard to put that into words that had any real meaning. Instead, he walked past McCoy without looking at him, giving a little shake of his head. “Don’t call him that. He isn’t a kid anymore.”

He could hear the short bark that passed for McCoy’s laughter echoing behind him.

“Well it’s about damn time you noticed.”

Point to McCoy, but it still didn’t go down any easier. “Asshole.”

“Dumbass.” It was almost cordial.

The fact that this exchange made him feel better than he had in ages probably said a lot about his mental state.

 **Chapter 9**

 **  
_  
Greatness lies, not in being strong, but in the right using of strength; and strength is not used rightly when it serves only to carry a man above his fellows for his own solitary glory. He is the greatest whose strength carries up the most hearts by the attraction of his own. ~ Henry Ward Beecher_   
**

 

 

Jim got up early. Had breakfast. Oatmeal and toast and fruit, putting the oatmeal on the toast wedge, which he had been told was weird, but tasted so good. Bones had scrounged up a waffle and some soy sausage, bleary eyed before his second cup of coffee. He used the cup as a shield, staring at Jim like he was going to spontaneously combust. In retaliation, Jim hummed a catchy song while pouring some orange juice and browsing a warp mechanics journal. He didn’t actually read any of the journal, but Bones didn’t need to know that.

He was pretty much living in Bones’ room, unwilling to put up with the soap opera Cochran dorm had become. Roommate was still being a dick and the girl at the front desk had become two girls at the front desk giving him an evil eye.

Med track girlfriend number two had dumped Bones after he called her too clingy, and Jim wasn’t about to argue with serendipity, so he moved in permanently. He’d thought they might rub each other the wrong way, but it had been surprisingly comfortable in an oddball domestic way he couldn’t recall, except in a few memories of pre-famine Tarsus.

Jim picked up after himself, didn’t drink all of Bones’ beer, and he didn’t bring girls back to the room. Tried to be the perfect roommate, except that with Bones, there wasn’t any try necessary.

It just worked. It was comfortable, and it was fucking weird that something so comfortable, like a worn knit sweater or a cup of cocoa, could make him so fucking uncomfortable. It made him smile and squirm and he wanted to pick at it like a scab, and he was fucking dealing with it because it was also something he didn’t even know he needed until he had it.

A steaming pile of bananas foster was dumped on Bones’ waffle with a plop, oozing fat and sugar. One of Jim’s ‘adjustments’ to the replicator. He still couldn’t get decent alcohol from the thing, but they now had bread pudding, proper cheese grits, unsweet cornbread and squash casserole. Jim had needed to readjust himself the first time he heard Bones moan at a bite of something southern fried and smothered in gravy, but it was worth the smile it put on his face.

He was definitely racking up favors, especially since Bones made him eat okra.

Okra.

Probably owed Bones an even dozen favors, but who was counting?

Jim finished his breakfast early, but lingered over the coffee. It wasn’t perfect, but it usually helped blunt his nerves enough that he could power through them. When he found himself drumming his fingers in nervous anticipation anyway, he clutched his Padd two-handed before placing it down and moving to the closet.

Clothes were laid out, and he dressed carefully, having perfectly laundered his uniform instead of scrounging for a clean shirt from the pile in the corner the way he used to.

Bones looked on after quickly pulling on his own cadet reds and putting a comb to his hair. He looked like he wanted to say something like ‘I told you so,’ or bitch about pretty boys and their ‘skin care bullshit' taking too long, instead of saying ‘don’t leave me,’ or ‘I’ll give ‘em all space herpes, just say the word.’

He just held his tongue with a constipated vengeance, piercing eyes saying everything for him.

So. Situation normal.

Kind of.

But Jim wasn’t nervous.

Not really.

Not like Bones was nervous. Not like it showed.

Jim squared his shoulders and pulled on his mantle of cockiness, just like he pulled on his uniform, smiling winningly, making Bones roll his eyes.

This? Would be awesome.

Really.

***

Chris thought he was arriving early, and he was, but the auditorium was already fairly packed- the walk to his seat, interminable. He was used to scrutiny, but had never been comfortable being under this kind of lens. Chris remained stoic, even when he received several looks from peers and cadets alike, eyebrows and frowns and tense postures that all questioned his silence, his lack of direct action. He would let them think what they wanted about his sitting on Jim's side of the room. He knew what it meant, even if no one else did. Rumor had made him either the villain or the hard treated benefactor, depending on who you spoke to, though he preferred to look like an asshole rather than a sad bastard vulnerable to predation.

His placement was fuel for rampant speculation. He could see the wave of gossip spread through the room like a Mandelbrot set, spiraling outward.

Fortunately, the only other person who deserved to be privy to what happened between him and Jim was McCoy, and he didn’t so much as look over. His worried eyes were trained on Jim for the entire ordeal.

No relationship, his ass. As if fucking defined the parameters of what made two people an us.

It was funny, but not in the ha-ha sense. He thought he would feel bitter about it, but he couldn’t begrudge Jim what he needed, when he really needed it. And Jim might, might, not need McCoy, but he was much better off with him. Kirk mirrored Chris in a lot of ways, but McCoy complemented him in ways Chris could never hope to, allowed Jim to be fully there, instead of fading into a two-dimensional construct.

No. He couldn’t begrudge Jim McCoy and whatever they were. No matter how much he wanted a piece of it for himself; even if he didn’t know what kind of fit he would be, where he would go, what function, if any, he might serve. Maybe a fit like their bodies did, acute angles notching together like they were engineered from the start. Maybe friction fit, forming tightly, but allowing for expansion and adjustment.

McCoy and Jim seemed to have formed under pressure, had this strange mutual codependence that seemed to work despite their fractures. Extruded, bent, water cut with faulty equipment- a sonic weld shoring up the worst cracks. But broken was still broken, and two broken things needed some serious gorilla glue to hold them together.

A pipe dream, really. Attempting to insert himself there, trying to be that glue. It was a recipe for disaster.

He looked at McCoy’s worried scowl once again, the way it trained on Jim. Wanted it trained on him, instead of the one that said ‘you prick.’ Wanted that regard, wanted to deserve that type of regard.

But he wasn’t going to get it, and he knew exactly why.

Hated recognizing it, now that he was letting it go, but there had been pity for Jim, deep down and hidden. Pity that the world had fucked him over so badly, given him so little that was good. But looking at Jim and McCoy, Jim and Bones, he felt that thread of pity slip away. If Jim’s father had lived. If Jim had grown up with no cares, so handsome and charming and golden, would he have appreciated what he had, when he had it? Known something special when he saw it? When it puked on him in a shuttle to San Francisco?

Sometimes he thought Jim just took it as his due, and then he’d be surprised all over again, when he caught a glimpse of his face. Jim, looking at McCoy like he might disappear. The way he had sometimes looked at Chris.

This Jim knew what he held, small and trembling in his palm like a punch-drunk moth, and knew how quickly it could be snatched away. Held onto it with everything he had.

No- no more pity for Jim. Life had snatched a lot away from him, but it had given back something most people could search for and never come close to finding. More than that, it had given him the ability to recognize the rare and precious value of it.

Not even this farce of a hearing could negate that.

And it was a fucking farce.

Sanctioned stupidity.

Institutional anger management issues.

He inwardly winced as he watched Spock stand and move to the podium.

Fuck.

Spock, who he had hand-picked for his XO. Brilliant mind, rigid in his Vulcan logic, yet thirsty to prove himself, though Chris couldn’t begin to imagine his motivation.

Spock, who he had cultivated, groomed. One of his stars.

Facing off against the brightest of them all.

Of everyone Kirk could have gone head to head with, Spock was not who he would have picked.

He’d thought there would be chilly reserve. Cold recitation of facts. The unsurpassed debate king of Starfleet, being clinical in his approach.

Everything Spock had presented to the world.

But no.

“You of all people should know. A captain cannot cheat death.”

Chris sucked in a breath. Straight for the emotional jugular.

Low fucking blow. It was brutal, and there was no way that Spock didn’t realize exactly what kind of card he was playing. He would have done his research on Cadet Kirk thoroughly before initiating these proceedings.

Once again, Chris was being slapped with his own earthbound incompetence. How the hell had this aspect of Spock’s personality gotten by him?

He’d been so blinded by Spock’s perfect, startlingly white record he had neglected to research the man’s personal command style.

His macro was amazing but his micro needed fucking work.

Chris, Jim, hell, the whole campus, they were getting a monster dose of it now.

“I, of all people.”

“Your father.”

A lead mass dropped to the bottom of his stomach. Maybe it was a gut reaction to any mention of Jim’s family situation, the reason for that situation, but Chris could barely keep from standing in outrage. Who brought someone’s dead dad into play like this? He thought of every time Spock had said something like “I do not understand the nuances involved in this particular idiom,’ or ‘His illogical human emotional response defies understanding.’

Vulcans don’t lie? Fucking bullshit.

Spock understood just fine. And exploited it. Not just exploited it, but broadcast his bitch fit for everyone to see.

He couldn’t imagine what that low blow was doing to Jim’s guts. It was bowel churning for Chris, and he wasn’t at the center of the gale.

It was easy to read if you really knew him, could see it in Jim’s face like he had seen it before, about to fracture like thin porcelain, but no. No. Jim was an Apollo. He had prepared for this argument.

And the moment passed, as vulnerability turned to annoyance and disdain because Jim suddenly saw this pissing contest for what it was, saw beneath the Vulcan veneer to the annoyed academic underneath, and it was angering him.

Good.

Spock. Spock! Was he that offended that someone had been able to hack his brainchild- challenge him intellectually?

Or was he offended that he had been beaten by a human?

He backed away from that thought.

No.

Just…no.

Spock wanted to win. Wanted that last fucking word- wanted to win, wanted to be better.

King of the mountain.

He couldn’t tell if it was pride or ego at play- what the costs might be, how far Spock was willing to go to make a point.

Spock was going to get slapped with a double dose of Terran illogic later. When Pike reamed his ass for calling a hearing over his Vulcan hissy- which Chris would do in private. It wasn’t regulation, but it was accepted behavior to fucking ask around about this type of thing before pointing skinny telepathic fingers. And he definitely should have talked to his future captain.

Spock wasn’t an autonomous unit. He needed feedback from his superiors. He’d make an excellent first officer, but Pike was going to put a boot in his ass till he got the difference between being a commander and being a martinet.

And the sooner Spock learned that few would willingly follow someone who punished with humiliation and cheap shots, the better.

Jim was just getting into it, getting good and properly pissed, good and properly on the offensive, when a messenger strode in to the room, intent on the head table. The interruption was quick, like a clean cut.

The Admiral’s voice was decisive. “We’ve received a distress call from Vulcan. With our primary fleet engaged in the Laurentian system, I hearby order all cadets to report to hangar one immediately. Dismissed.”

It took Chris a moment to understand what was being said, to shift gears from instructor, friend- onetime fuck, spectator to a circus- to a different state of awareness, a different way of being, unable to momentarily hear over the sudden roar of blood through his veins.

Hearing.

There was no hearing. No accuser or accused.

No crowd of cadets filing out in a surge of speculation. No thing left undone, unsaid.

Only his ship.

His sky.

Four months early. No milk run, no training wheels.

Just life. Filled.

Full to bursting.

Light.

Cresting the horizon till he transcended it.

One arc in his universe might remain incomplete, but he felt another closing with a burst of light so intense it could birth a quasar.

Holy shit.

The room was clearing rapidly by the time he had absorbed that first rush of adrenaline, come back down to Earth. Ha!. Polite shoving, tall bastards blocking his view. He craned his neck, searching, wanting to share this moment, not knowing how. He finally caught Jim’s determined eye, giving him a nod, not quite sure what he was trying to communicate. Saying it anyway.

When Jim returned the nod before hurrying away with McCoy, Chris told himself that the feeling in his chest was in no way tied to Kirk understanding everything that passed silently between them.

McCoy glared at him before skulking off behind Jim; the feeling in Chris’ chest had nothing to do with that, either.

***

Everything after that-

And that’s how he would define his existence later, dividing everything into before or after-

Everything after-

Space. The Enterprise. A quirk of fate, a parking brake. Jim, so terrified and sure of himself, and Jim.

Red Alert.

A wasteland. Wreckage. Incomprehensible loss.

Romulans.

March of doom to the Galileo.

He’d made Jim first officer, because Spock would be a good captain, but that time obviously wasn’t now. He’d needed to patch up those small failings with bravery and risk taking and maverick ability. If he was going on this mission, a last mission, he wanted to leave a trail of audacity in his wake.

Ordering Jim into a suicidal ETLO jump, freefall from exobase- madness. Sheer madness. He didn’t think it would hurt so much, to give that order, but he’d had no choice. There was no choice here. None at all. As if they were on a circumscribed path that was impossible to derail.

Odd, that these were his thoughts once he was alone, with only his head for company.

Odd that his mind should turn to Jim, that he had such faith placed there. That Jim could be a source of comfort.

“I am Christopher Pike, Captain, U.S.S. Enterprise. Registration NCC-1701.”

He’d read a book once. A novel. He couldn’t remember the name, since he was given mostly to non-fiction, but a few parts had stuck with him, like a particularly aggressive burr. There was a mantra that a character repeated, over and over, meant to face down fear. Fear of pain, fear of the unknown. It was a mantra used to remind the speaker that they were human, and unique in their reason, in their existence. That they could triumph over any pain that sought to dehumanize them.

He couldn’t remember that exact mantra, probably wouldn’t like it if he did. But he damn well had one of his own.

“Christopher. Answer my question.” As if he had any other answer to give.

“Christopher Pike, Captain, U.S.S. Enterprise. Registration NCC-1701.”

Metal tongs. Something fierce and writhing. Chittering beast.

“Christopher Pike, Captain, U.S.S. Enterprise. Registration NCC-1701.”

Mouth, forced open. Pain. Screaming that couldn’t be his. Tongues of fire licking into his throat, his head.

“I AM! Christopher Pike, Captain, U.S.S. Enterprise. Registration…”

***

Chris woke abruptly to twilight and a soft vibration that was instantly recognizable. The walls were clinical white. Medical displays. Monitors. Privacy curtain pulled three quarters.

He twitched and realized he was strapped to the bed. Secondary medical bay.

Enterprise.

He remembered Jim.

He’d saved Jim.

And Jim had saved him in return.

He hadn’t expected to make it out alive. As soon as Nero’s demand had been made, he’d resigned himself to being a footnote in the history books- pretty soon bright-eyed Starfleet cadets would be writing essays on where he went wrong in his decision making process. He’d told Kirk to come and get him, but it was flippant, a poor substitute for everything he’d wanted to say- couldn’t say. Because he was captain and needed to project a confident face to his crew. Because he was just too damn cowardly.

He shied away from thoughts of the Narada. Towards the end things became confused in his head, a jumble of mismatched images. Probably the drug cocktail he’d been hit with as soon as McCoy got the gist of his injuries.

Being handed off to McCoy. Nurses. A call for medications. Prep. Then an endless period of nothing. Brief bouts of lucidity and too bright light.

Earth. He had asked about Earth.

His crew. Mostly okay.

His legs. Had he asked about his legs? He couldn’t feel that slug moving around, glutting itself on his fluids anymore; his head felt lighter, clearer, but that wasn’t saying much because there was still a thin film of cobweb lacing everything he tried to concentrate on.

He was about to say something, call out, when he heard familiar voices.

“Ow!”

“Don’t be a little bitch. Let me treat this.” McCoy. That bitching held a familiar twang that was thickened with exhaustion.

“I’m letting you treat this. I’m just objecting to the-“

“I meant the other this. The elephant in the room. The one doin’ cartwheels.”

There was a significant pause, and a tearing of plastic, some sort of wrapping. When Jim finally responded his voice was closed off and arctic despite its hoarse sawing- metal grit upon metal.

“I don’t want to talk about it right now, Leonard.”

“Tough titties, Jim. I’m not gonna let you stew over it and start seeing what isn’t there. I know you.”

“Just hurry up with my ribs. The bridge needs me. I shouldn’t have even come down for this. I’ve got dozens of communications to respond to, the quartermaster said that the ship left dock without even a fraction of the supplies we need, and half the crew is weeping like-” Jim trailed off, sounding completely unlike himself. “Like they just lost-“

Chris could fill in the blanks. Everything. Fucking everything.

“Look.” A tired sigh- Chris could hear the bags under McCoy’s eyes. Two soft tinks, something hitting a stainless steel table. “I didn’t protest that green-blooded bastard ditching you on Delta Vega. Not until after you were gone. Then I cursed a blue streak.”

“I don’t want to-“

“Because,” McCoy continued, doggedly. “The Narada had just taken out six ships and a planet. They weren’t going to concern themselves with a moon.”

“Leonard.”

“He just made you first officer, Jim, and you tossed yourself off a drilling platform. Chekov barely rescued you both, and then you wanted to go after it? You were safe on Delta Vega.” His voice became gruffer. “I could breathe if you were on Delta Vega.”

There was movement, and a humorless laugh.

“Safe? I wasn’t safe. It was Hoth. I was almost eaten.”

Chris hated to hear Jim sound so small, close to defeat. After all of his triumphs, he shouldn’t sound like that. He should never sound like that. Not during, not this long after the fact. What was going on, that made Jim this hollow?

“What?” McCoy sounded confused.

“Haven’t you seen that movie? The thing with the teeth?”

And here was the point where Chris could imagine everything. McCoy’s face, morphing from vaguely upset and tired into I’ll-fucking-kill-him. Psycho eyebrow, sneer like an angry dog, with lips pulled back and quivering against gums, over sharp teeth in an even sharper mouth. Hungry and vicious.

Why the hell had Jim been stranded? And why did it sound like Jim was in command of the ship?

“Ice monsters. Scary fucking ice monsters that eat smaller ice monsters. Fuck, Bones. I’m juicy on the outside and crunchy on the inside.”

There was a small scuffle, then the beeping of a tricorder.

“Hey!”

“Did anything hurt you? Bites? Scratches I should know about? Dammit, Jim! They could have been venomous. They aren’t in the Fleet database, I checked. Supposed to be small scavengers only.”

“Christ. I’m okay. Keep that shit away from me. You already had a long look at the goods. Give it a rest.”

But Jim’s voice was it’s own tell, and it had become softer, lighter. Not less angry- it would be a long time before any of them could say that, but more open to McCoy, more willing to let down the walls he’d had to erect to keep the majority of soul intact.

Pike knew this Jim where few did.

“What about your phaser? Where was your pack? It’s standard issue.”

“There was nothing standard about that shit. No protocols followed. Spock should have put me in the brig. And apparently Cupcake thought I was ‘too much of a danger to arm.’ They took the phaser out of the pack; I asked, after.”

“Then Cupcake can get in fucking line. I’ll kill him when I’m done with Spock.”

“Chill the fuck out, Bones. I’m okay. It worked out for the best. And Cupcake now has some problems of his own.”

“Reverse nepotism?”

“He’s too prejudiced and too bitter for that position. I’d have kept him if he was able to be professional.”

There was the sound of a tricorder going offline, a small digital death knell breaking the tension.

“So I’m Bones again?” This was quiet. Sad.

“Yeah. Yeah, you’re my Bones.”

A pause, two three four.

“What about Joanna?” Chris didn’t know who Joanna was, but Jim’s solemn tone made her important.

“She was never in danger, Jim. She was off-planet with her grandmother. I didn’t need to worry about her. I had other things to worry about.”

“Never happy unless you’re worrying.”

“It doesn’t make me happy. It makes me a nervous wreck.”

But Chris thought Jim was on to something there. McCoy wasn’t made happy by the worrying; he was happy because he had someone to worry about.

“You asshole. Don’t you think that I worried about you? Up here while I was down there. Letting Spock do whatever seemed fucking logical?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I thought about it. But Dr. Puri was dead, and these people needed me. And I needed to know you were all right.”

“I’m fine.” Jim laughed quietly. “You really bitched at Spock?”

“Yeah.” Chris could hear a smile in there somewhere. “You woulda loved it. Told him he was out of his Vulcan mind and called you a prized stallion.”

“Stallion?”

“Then Spock said something about breaking stallions. I wanted to hit him with a hypo, I was so mad. He had no right. I stopped listening to anything he had to say after that.”

Chris almost wanted to interrupt, ask all the questions jockeying for first place, wanted to know what the hell had happened on his bridge. But he held his tongue, wanting to hear their private conversation more.

“I’m sorry I missed that.”

“I’m- I’m sorry too.”

“I know. It’s okay.”

“No. It’s not. And when you came back, givin’ me that look, when you wouldn’t let me help you. Fuck, Spock’s dad had to stop him, you dumb shit. When you left with Spock-”

“It is. It’s okay.” A rustle of fabric. Soft movement.

“Shut up. I’m supposed to be the one comforting you, here.”

“And you’re shit at it. But I have to say…”

“I said, shut up.”

“Your logic. It totally sucks. Big rubber donkey dick. Sucks.”

“I’m gonna tell you what I told that pointy-eared asshole- there wasn’t anything logical about it. He can take his logic and shove it up his ass for the thrill. You can’t be logical about people. Especially you.”

“Oh.” Jim cleared his throat, and Pike couldn’t tell if he was uncomfortable with that declaration or not. “Well, then. Fuck logic.”

McCoy obviously didn’t know what to make of that, and settled for noncommittal silence.

It became so pregnant with things unsaid that even Chris became fidgety before McCoy cleared his throat too, prelude to an abrupt segue.

“Four hours.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’ve got four hours to do what you need to do. Then you’re handing the conn to someone else. I’m going to bunk in Puri’s room. It’s big enough to share, and I didn’t think you’d want to use Pike’s room.”

More than anything else, the fact that Kirk didn’t even try to argue McCoy’s ultimatum said a metric fuck ton. “Thanks. God, I’m tired. This captain stuff is…”

Jim was shouldering a burden he hadn’t been quite prepared for, trying to sound less alone- and failing. “And my throat’s still sore even after the good stuff. Stim’s wearing off too, but I have some things to tie up first.” Chris heard Jim move. It sounded like he had hopped off a biobed. “And I know I’m not a hundred percent because now I’m fucking whining about it.”

“You whine about everything.”

Jim’s voice got softer, the concerned Jim voice. “I’ll try to be there sooner. And you better be there too, because I know you must be dead on your feet. That was a long surgery.”

“I told you. He’ll be okay.”

“I know.”

“I’ll be there when you get off shift.”

Chris doesn’t hear Kirk walk away, but everything is quiet for a time.

Until it suddenly isn’t.

“Well? Have fun eavesdropping?”

McCoy rounded the curtain, arms crossed, face impassive.

“It’s not,” Chris began before he had to cough. “It’s not eavesdropping if you’re practically standing over me.”

“Hmm.” McCoy came closer, looking at a few readouts before getting rid of the restraints around one arm.

“I’m undoing these, but don’t try to sit up. That insect did a number on your spine.” He moved to the other side of the bed, unfastening the other restraint.

“My legs?”

“It’s not permanent.”

Chris closed his eyes, let out a shaky breath, tried not to cry. “Jeezus.”

“But it isn’t pretty either. It’s going to be a lot of work. Lots of therapy.”

“How long?”

McCoy sat down in a chair and gave him a frank appraisal. “You’re lucky it didn’t sever anything I can’t fix. It’s caused trauma to your cervical spine. You’ve got four new discs to replace the ones that were destroyed. The reason you can’t feel your legs right now is due to swelling and pinching of the spinal cord. It’s in a touchy place and neuro regen can only do so much.” McCoy slouched a bit, frown knitting his brows. “That will take some time to heal, and I can’t speed the process. Then physio. You’ll need to learn how to walk again.“

“How long?”

“At least a year. Maybe two.”

“A year.”

“Consider yourself lucky. Those other captains.” He didn’t finish the thought, just shook his head.

“What about the other ships? The Truman?” Number One’s ship.

“Captain Pike-“

“Please.”

“We have reports of a few survivors. Pockets with minimal life support being found. But no names yet. Most of them are gone.”

“Shit.”

“That was a brave thing you did.”

“Shit.”

“Dumb as a bag of hammers, but brave.” McCoy leaned forward. “So I guess you aren’t a total loss.”

The shift in intensity, from doctor to something else, surprised him. “What-“

“I talked to Jim, now I’m going to talk at you. Both batshit insane. Do you know what it did to him, when you went off like Robau? Jimmy ate your thesis for breakfast, lunch and dinner for three weeks. Hell. He made me eat it. I know all about your conclusions. Your opinion on Robau’s actions. I’m no strategist, but I’d think you’d listen to your own damn self.”

“It’s different when you’re the one in charge. I was captain- I had a duty to my ship.” Was captain. Fuck.

But McCoy went on as if Chris hadn’t said a thing. “Then you put it on his shoulders. Turned him into his daddy, near as I can tell.”

“I made Spock captain.”

“And a bang-up job he did, too. Rendezvous in the Laurentian system, my Aunt Fanny. If this had gone wrong, if Jim hadn’t pushed, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. You’d still be in the belly of that beast and Earth’d be gone.”

Chris could hear the heart rate monitor jump a little, then remain steady.

“Spock was the-“

But McCoy went on as if Chris hadn’t spoken. “You turned Jim into his daddy, when all daddy means to him is a fucking suicide mission.”

“I didn’t have any other options.”

“I want to thank you.”

Chris rolled his head to the side as best he could, to look at McCoy, because the waver in his voice was so wrong, the thank you, choked and stubborn and just so out of left field and wrong.

“I hate you. And I want to thank you. Jim. He won. He won where his father couldn’t. You listened to him, made him first officer, then you saved him, on that deathtrap. He told me.” McCoy shook his head, a denial, but never broke eye contact so Chris could see the sincerity of his words in every angry facet of hazel. “Which is why I want to kill you, fucking rip you to pieces with my bare hands, and then I want to kiss you stupid, because nothing else could have done that for him. He beat the no-win scenario. For real this time.”

All Chris had in his defense was the truth. “I knew he’d be great.”

“Yeah, well, I already thought he was great. Even when he was a drunken little shit.”

“Not what I meant.”

But McCoy ignored him once again. “I’m still pissed at you. I don’t want to be beholden to you. You confuse the hell out of me, and I hate that Jim needs to prove himself to you, but Jim still cares and he doesn’t know what to do with it except blow shit up.”

“Cadet Kirk-“

“Captain Kirk.”

“He doesn’t need-“

“It was a shit thing you did to him, then and now,” McCoy went on, sour with the bitterness of his words and Chris saw that his hand was trembling. “But at least it lanced the wound.” He stood up, looking down at Pike, concern and anger warring for dominance of his expression. “Maybe you’ve got enough trauma in you now. Maybe you’re kind of even.”

“Parity.”

“Close to it. Doubt Jim realizes it. As far as he knows he only had to face certain death to live up to your standards.”

The doctor was shaky, haunted. Tragic- a portrait of Adam expelled from the garden. Every angle and plane hung over with grief unspilled, unnecessary after all, but impossible to contain again.

And it had poured from his mouth like vomit. A violent purge. Poetry. Every one of those chords ringing true, like a church bell or a banshee on the ramparts.

“Are you like this with all your patients?”

Chris was trying for levity, to defuse the tension, because it was freaking him out a bit, this McCoy, but McCoy treated it seriously.

“Never had one that needed it so much.” McCoy moved to the curtain, grabbing its edge with raw-knuckled hands. Lips a tight line, face grey. “Trust me. It isn’t making me happy either. I shouldn’t be treating you. You shouldn’t be in my care. But you’ll walk again, and that’s a fact.”

“I don’t think-“

“No. You don’t. You got that in common.” McCoy started to draw the curtain. “Jim will debrief you tomorrow morning. Let him know.”

“Let him know what?”

“Tell him he doesn’t have to kill himself to win your regard. He’ll keep trying. He’s that kind of eager dipshit.” The curtain was between them now, and Chris could no longer see McCoy’s face.

“You get to keep your legs. I get to keep Jim.”

And then Chris was alone with the hum of the ship and softly pinging readouts, a counterpoint to the rapid arrhythmia of his heart.

 **  
**

**Chapter 10**

 **  
**

_  
**  
**   
_

_  
**The great art of life is sensation, to feel that we exist, even in pain. ~ Lord Byron**   
_

 

 

It was closer to five hours later when Jim finally handed over the conn and made his way to deck nine, section two. He was about to drop, he could feel it in every leaden step, every sore muscle that made itself known. He’d been prepared to bunk in the ready room, but the ship’s designers apparently thought an office was superfluous, because there hadn’t been one.

A small, stupid fact, but one that drove home just how little he knew about this mammoth task he’d taken on.

He didn’t want to think of it, what it all meant, and that meant sleep. Can't overthink something when you're passed out. Can't freak out about it either.

He could push beyond it, get another wind, he knew he could. He’d like to say he’d had worse, but the truth was, there wasn’t much worse than the last 48 hours, not even Tarsus, and his body didn’t bounce back like it did when he was thirteen. Hard to admit, but it was true.

Besides, he’d promised Bones, and he didn’t want to give Bones yet another reason to worry. He’d figured the bastard would be asleep, but it wasn’t outside the realm of possibility that he was awake and hankering for another victim to hypospray.

Two more yeomen stood at attention as he walked past, and he nodded quickly, waving them back to whatever they were doing. He’d nearly given up on trying to get them to stop, but he couldn’t stand watching them fret over saluting when they looked like they were about to fall to pieces.

No more adrenaline. No more endorphins. No more rush, no more action, no more extreme need. He wondered, for the first time, if this is how Bones felt after the divorce, if this was what made him get on that shuttle and join Starfleet. So much anger and sadness and rage with such a thin veneer of civilization coating it that it was close to turning into apathy--so close to crippling he had to jump ship towards its polar opposite. Dissociation as an art form. Bones was always talking about himself as if he were Methuselah, hundreds of years old instead of a prime thirty. As if he was tired.

Used up.

Over.

Jim had always thought it was funny, how he played himself off as a crotchety old man, old before his time, even if he was only six years Jim’s senior.

Jim didn’t think it was funny anymore.

Three forward 125-

Three forward 126-

 Three forward 127.

 Jim leaned his forehead against the door for a moment, closing his eyes and psyching himself up for the conversation ahead. He’d talked to Bones briefly, but so much had been unspoken. And he appreciated that, he did, that Bones had given him space, had allowed him to be the captain. Had known that a little too much kindness, too much understanding, would make him break. Not irreparably, but too soon.

Jim sighed, turning to the door panel to input his code, since there was no way his biometric signature would be integrated into the system yet. Yet another thing on his long to-do list. The door hissed open and he stepped inside, tense, fingers drumming the air.

The lights were dim, twenty percent, but there was also a small glow from a globe next to the full-sized bed. Half the bed was occupied, covers ruched up, and only a small tuft of dark brown hair exposed.

Jim shrugged out of his undershirt, tossing it over the nearby desk chair, shrugging off the chill when his nipples furled in the cold, then toed off his boots. Buckle undone, pants placket peeled open, he let his trousers drop to the floor.

“Bones?” Nearly silent in the dim light, the name was barely a sigh out of his mouth as he approached the bed on socked feet. But Bones heard it, turning around in the covers, face grumpy with lack of sleep, scowling over the edge of the blanket.

“Bones. I…” Jim got that much out, before biting his bottom lip, pulling everything else back in.

But Bones just shook his head, bringing the blanket down and pulling back the corner for Jim. Didn’t say anything, just made a frustrated motion towards the bed, expression saying you idiot.

But Jim knew what he was saying, and the Gordian knot of dread that had coiled round his heart loosened and slipped away, just as he slipped under the covers. It was a small bed, and he lay close to Bones; not cuddled, but sharing warmth, and maybe other things he was too tired to name. Bones still hadn’t said a word, just slid one hand into Jim’s and held on tight.

Right then, it was enough.

Right then, it was perfect.

The last thing Jim remembered before drifting off to sleep was Bones’s breath, evening out into his  slumber.

***

Waking on a ship in space was odd. Bones’s old dorm room had a UV screen over the window, touch sensitive so that it would lighten to clear or polarize to almost totally opaque with the brush of a finger, but no matter the setting you still got a general idea of the time from the way the sun escaped the edges, or from the bustle of cadets outside your door.

Waking on a starship was waking to eternal night. No sense of time. No sense of place. It was quiet, but it was a cathected quiet, the kind you sometimes found in haunted battlefields.

Jim woke slowly, comfortable and warm in his cocoon, but out of sync--not able to immediately place if he was supposed to be anywhere. Despite that niggling worry, he floated in his half awake state for a time, pulling the cocoon closer, burrowing down.

“Mmm.”

He knew the cocoon was Bones. Bones curled up against his back, chin resting on Jim’s head, arm wrapped tight. Bones’s legs tangled with his, one sharp toenail digging into his calf. Bones’s smell, like how he imagined Georgia smelled, all green things and humid, then antiseptic and cheap-ass Starfleet soap. He breathed deep and drew that scent close, anything to replace the stale scent of canned recycled air, that eternal new-hovercar smell.  
   
“Jim? You okay?” It was more of a vibration and a puff of moist air against Jim’s neck than actual words but he felt it down to the marrow.

“Yeah.” He cleared his throat to get rid of some of the morning roughness. It felt like he should feel awkward, like a morning after, but all he felt was regret that he had to leave. “Computer. Time.”

“0534.”

Jim tensed to get up, resigned to leaving the comfort of bed and Bones, but the arm draped over his side tightened. He really didn’t feel like fighting it.

“The bridge isn’t expecting you till 0800. You’ve got a little time yet.”

“The bridge needs me.”

“The bridge needs you healthy and aware. CMO’s orders.”

Jim huffed, but still didn’t fight Bones or the lethargy he was feeling, wiggling back into comfort, if not sleep.

“Besides. It’s damn cold, and I'm a needy bitch.”

Jim wanted to laugh, but that was too much work. “I had to lower the ambient temperature. We have enough juice to sustain us for the trip, but I had to get conservative in some creative ways, and lowering the temp was one of them. It’s three degrees above absolute out there.”

“Don’t remind me.”

"And we're on rations. No replicators. Every meal in the mess. Fuck I hate rations. I've eaten so much 'fleet peanut butter I can't even look at the stuff."

"Chapel told me."

"Two weeks back, minimum. Engineering is trained on some system-wide haptic interfaces, but the new Constitution designs incorporated some multi-modality modules. The learning curve is steep on the new tech, and it's holding us back some.  ‘Fleet can give us some supplies to make up for the deficits, but we'll still be shoe-stringing it. Laundry is half-staffed and short on replacement linen. Uniforms are at a premium. Cleaning service is bare-bones." Jim felt like he was babbling, but he couldn’t stop. If they were discussing ship business they weren’t discussing anything else.

"We're a make-do ship, here. We'll be fine. After the past few days, this'll be like camping,” Bones drawled into his neck, dark molasses in these early hours.

"They said they could have most of us relieved, but I declined. They'll take the grievously wounded and let us make our own way back."

Bones, for all his sarcasm and pessimism, never failed to throw himself behind something he thought worthy of praise. And Bones really knew his ship psychology. "Good decision," Bones said, nodding as he spoke.

And it was. Jim and Spock had surprised each other with complete agreement on that subject and more. "They need to grieve together. They could all be back on Earth in two days, but that'd be throwing them to the circling sharks. As soon as they hit dirtside they'd be in endless debriefs and a media circus. They need the time."

And shit. He’d given Bones an opening.

"So do you." Quiet and thoughtful. So un-Bonesish--except when it wasn’t. He wasn't.  Because Bones was always-- himself.  Real. "You know, just because I bitch about you doing something doesn't mean I don't think you can. It just means that I don't think you should have to."

"Is this where we talk about our feelings and hug?"

"Your defense mechanisms need some updating." No accusation, just a flat statement.

Jim let out a shuddering little sigh. "Right. Wouldn't want to be predictable." He turned around to face Bones with a false grin that began to buckle under intense scrutiny almost immediately. Bones was so close he could feel their breath mingle, even as one of Bones' large hands came up to clasp his bicep. If he were a braver man, a stupider man, he could easily bridge the gap between them with a subtle shift. A small alignment. "Christ, you suspicious bastard. Can't put anything over on you lately."

"I thought you were past trying.”

Bones was pulling out the big guns, all soft words and concern that spoke to his brain and other bits that were still too tired to appreciate the moment. Words that morphed into sticky guilt as soon as Jim got his grubby hands all over them. Yeah, they’d done this dance before, but he didn’t want to be vulnerable right now. This crew didn’t deserve a vulnerable captain. They didn’t get a compromised Spock, so they weren’t going to get a compromised Jim.  
   
“You don’t get to hide from me. I don’t care where you are in the pecking order now. You know that I get you aren't really like this, so why even try?" Bones had asked similar things before, in a similar fashion, and Jim had always blown it off with some flippant shit, but this time Bones’ question had an edge to it, like a game show host asking him for the final answer.

And lying to him wasn't as easy as it should be. Mostly, Jim didn't even try. And, despite the question, Bones already knew the answer. The bastard. He just wanted to hear it.

Jim tucked his chin and kept his eyes down, but the truth struggled out anyway. "I don't know. I've been doing it for so long.”

"You're allowed to be less than super-human. At least around me." Leonard bumped Jim's shoulder with his own, and great, if this wasn't already the definition of bizarro fucked-up, then Leonard McCoy trying to jolly Jim out of a funk definitely put it over the top. "I don't fall for that crap anyhow. I know shit from Shinola."

But then Bones's face eclipsed into a brief darkness. "But you might need to be careful out there." Careful wasn't the word for it. Regulation 586. Subsection two. There was a reason that Starfleet didn't take many people with a high level of trauma, and that's because everyone had a breaking point. They were almost guaranteed to suffer some during the duration of their service, and piling that on top of pre-existing trauma was asking for trouble.

A crew that started out on the Good Ship Lollipop didn't remain that naive for long.

"Careful as the captain," Bones continued. The if you want to remain captain was there, but unvoiced.  "But in here. In here." Bones's hand migrated to clasp Jim's own, held tight and against Bones's heart, though he didn't even seem to realize it. "We're just Jim and Bones. You don't have to be anything else."

“I know.”

“Do you?” And Jim couldn’t look, because he was a coward, no lie. He didn’t want to see Bones’s face when everything spilled like a shuttle crash. “I know you, Jim.” Bones was so damned earnest Jim was almost embarrassed for him. “I know you.”

“Jim and Bones, huh?”

Bones blushed, and Jim felt an electric thrill tap into his spine. If this weren’t so serious, if there was more time, if it was the right time…

But Bones powered through it, refusing to be thrown off course. “You can act the asshole, but I know better. The crew--they know better too, now. It was there on your sleeve. And a front only works if people don’t know about it.”

“Bones…”

“It’s not a bad thing, okay?”

"It's just..." Jim went silent, struggling to put the twisted feeling laying low in his gut into words, words that didn't sound like a sieve for the guilt.

His mind was at maximum warp with would-have, should-have, and his body was pressing forward with nownownow decisiveness, but he didn’t want their epiphany- their shiny, golden moment, to be in the midst of despair and destruction.

It would be sacrilege. Profane.

And probably ironic.

Somehow.

"I know," Bones said.

And Jim would usually scoff at those words, usually uttered in a disposable way that meant squat, but even that had dried up, because Bones did know. And that sucked. And Jim feeling powerless sucked. This entire situation, sucked. "Have you seen the lists?" Lists of the dead. They were receiving revised lists every few hours as they limped towards Jupiter Station.

"Yeah, I've seen them." Bones lowered his eyes, almost reverential, almost a quick prayer. "Too many of them."

Jim had checked constantly, with a morbid, self-flagellating fascination. It’d happened before Enterprise even left dock, but maybe if he had been less invested in being right, in triumphing over the KM, he would have picked up the significance of worrisome subspace cues before things had coalesced into a galactic clusterfuck. Maybe.

It was a stupid train of thought that ended nowhere, because he could just as easily start to blame Spock, or Pike, or the other Spock. He wasn’t quite sure why he was torturing himself with it, except maybe the fact that he was alive and so many were dead. Some ‘Fleet shrink might call it survivor’s guilt, and that was a part of it, yeah, but there was a kernel of something more self-centered and ugly. Survivor’s fuck yeah.

He was just so damned relieved that they’d made it. He wanted to scream because he was alive and could. He wanted a good hard fuck in some sort of primitive life-affirming abandon. He wanted everything those six billion others would never experience again, and that made the bile rise in his throat.

Bulimic food for thought.

Mortification of the mind.

Cryovulcanism of the heart.

Six billion people. Stalin had once said that one death was a tragedy, and a million deaths, a statistic.

The Federation had already released statements that proved him fucking right. Every know-nothing quote from ass-sitting admirals left him naked and aching. Things said about Vulcan, every remembrance of the ships lost, it fucking gutted.

Half the doctors and nurses Bones had worked with at Starfleet were gone. Jim had gotten to know them through clinic visits, and felt their absence almost as keenly as Bones did. Most of Jim’s class--friends, enemies, fuckbuddies, comrades--blinked out.

Black dwarfs.

Vulcan had the numbers, and he ached for Spock, he did, but Jim knew those officers. Gary and several nurses on the Farragut. Bridge crew on the Excelsior. And…

The lists were only half complete, the names of confirmed survivors so few. “Gaila was on the Farragut. Uhura told me. Still early numbers--but the odds." Jim was numbing himself to it.

Leonard said something rough and raw, but Jim couldn't tell what it was. Only that it hurt.

"Gaila. She just--knew.  She had been there too.“ If his breath hitched, Bones wouldn’t fault him. Jim turned into him, hiccup contained, face in Bones' neck because some things were easier to say when you weren't staring into someone's soul.

“We’d hear people whining about stupid things and being so depressed about it, like cars or boyfriends or money--bullshit, you know? We wouldn’t say anything, but we’d always be contemptuous, and kind of superior, because what do people like that know about pain, right?"

Jim was getting louder, and Bones's large hand came up to stroke his hair, massage his temple. Jim imagined he felt a dry kiss to the crown of his head. "So what, they broke a nail, big woohoo. After Tarsus, I never wanted to take anything for granted.”

“Jim.”

“I was wrong. God I was wrong." He could feel his voice crack, and wasn't that funny? Because he couldn't actually feel a thing. Too numb or tired for processing hurt. “It isn't enough for your heart to break because everybody's heart is broken now. It was a whole ship full of those people, and I laughed at them, and now they’re all my people, and I would take it back if I could."

"I know you would," Bones said in the tone of voice usually reserved for Joanna.

"Keep them ignorant. Cover them in shock webbing." Something erupted from his throat, a chuckle like crushed glass, but there wasn't anything funny there. "We used to think we had some big secret, like an eye to the inner workings of the universe. An exclusive club. And you were in the club too, because you feel things, down to the bone." He could feel Bones startle under his cheek. "That’s why you’re Bones, you know? Because you’ve got a stupid heart.”

“Yeah.” Bones. So resigned. It was kind of cute and kind of viscerally naked all at once.

“We were so damn ignorant.”

“Not ignorant. Just dealing. And you did." Bones stroked his arm. Comfort, not seduction, reminding him he was there in a physical way Jim responded to on a paleomammalian level. "A survivor. Not a victim. That's not just semantics. It's important.”

“The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain. We tried to believe that.”

“A quote?”

“Should get it tattooed on me. Gaila was really fond of it. She’d like that.”

“You don’t know that she’s gone, Jim.”

“That’s the thing. She is. I know she is. She." His voice didn't crack, but it thinned like crystal, an audio conduit for the shaking he couldn't prevent. "She always wanted…she had a sister. Arta." Bones's hand stilled, then moved to his shoulder brushing bone and sinew, one finger curling against Jim's mandible, bringing his face up.

As exposed as his words.

More fingers came up to smooth over cheekbones and stubble, one catching on his lip to stroke the thin membrane in a way that made his breath stutter. "Bones."

"Go on." Bones's voice was homemade divinity. Velvet and electricity. Whiskey and midnight and everything Jim had ever liked.

"She always wanted to go back for her.” Jim looked up through his lashes and all he could see was Bones. “Everything else was about living fiercely, but she regretted leaving her.”

“She was happy, Jim. She wanted you to be happy and she’d be pissed that you’re not.”

Jim shook his head, but he didn't know what he was denying. “I don’t want to have that kind of regret.”

“Then don’t.” One hand reached up to cup the back of Jim’s head, big-knuckled thumb stroking the coarse hair at his nape. It didn’t pull him in or anything, not like he would have liked, but it was proprietary. Possessive. A kiss would have felt like fiddling while Rome burned, but it was enough to feel the banked heat of that palm, the pulse of that thumb, the sheen of want in those half-lidded eyes. Maybe the best thing he’d felt in forever.

Sort of like a promise.

Jim made a non-committal hum, but his words, when they came, were light. “I’m thinking about it.”

Bones shook his head in that way he had, the one that disguised approbation as disapproval. "You know, you're almost sounding reasonable. I wonder if I should adjust my meds."

"Ha!"

"Or your meds. I'm not picky."

And that was Bones all over. Ego-deflating awesome, even now. The continuity was bittersweet. And appropriate.

Jim pulled away just enough to give him half a wry smirk. "Thanks.”

“Anytime.” Bones smiled and stared at him, hot and intent, before catching himself and grimacing. He started to turn, to give Jim a little space, himself a little space, but Jim arrested him with a hand to the shoulder.

"No. Really. Thanks." Serious face, but words that seemed stupid- inadequate- juvenile, and hundreds of other things that Bones had called him over the years, but it seemed to warm Bones, who smiled anyway, and collapsed back into the pillow and closed his eyes. A second later, he pulled Jim down too, manhandling him into prime nap position. “Hey.”

"A physician is nothing but a consoler of the mind." Bones might not smirk like Jim, but he did it with his voice, anyway.

"A quote?"

"From some damn where."

"No Algonquin Round Table for you."

"Pfft. Who's Algonquin?"

Jim grinned and went silent for a time, letting the sound of Bone’s breathing and the rise and fall of his chest come close to lulling him to sleep. But some niggling little thing would not let him be.

“Bones.”

“Hmm.”

“Bones!” But Bones was quiet. Limp. Placid.

“Bones.” He stroked Bones’ hair and got a rumble of contentment in response. Bastard was almost asleep.

“I.” Stupid. So stupid. “I just wanted you to know.”

“Hmm?” Content and cat-like and so comfortable.

“This? Is good. Real good.” There were prizes for understatement, right?

Bones hummed agreement again, and maybe that was too sneaky and too early to count, but it totally counted in the final tally.

Totally.

“I.” Jim’s tongue knotted over unfamiliar adjectives. “Really good. You know?”

Bones’ answering snore was ambiguous at best.

Jim’s hard-on?

Was not.

Fuck.

***

Pike was asleep.

Sheets were pulled back with military precision, tucked up under his arms. He was reclined instead of flat, breathing even and deep. Face turned slightly to the side, slack, and strange in that slackness. The vitality was gone. Lines smoothed, as if he didn't have any worries or responsibilities- which just was not Pike. Not the Chris that Jim knew.

When he'd imagined being with Pike, it'd never been about sleep, just how many times and how many ways they could fuck until Chris got bored with Jim. He'd never even imagined sleep, much less waking up or soft words murmured against ears warm from the covers. He'd not thought of breath, not too sweet, stale air and the salt of sweat long since dried, languid hard-ons rutting just to rut- the journey, not the destination.

Maybe Jim was growing up, because now he thought that lack of imagination was childish. And a shame.

Sure, Chris had fucked him. Had fucked him up but good.

But maybe he'd fucked a little sense into Jim, too.

As if reading his mind, Chris' face sharpened into its familiar configuration, and his eyes cracked open and focused in that familiar way he had, as sharp and piercing as a grackle.

"Hey." Jim didn't know how to say everything that needed to be said.

Thank you for saving me.

I'm sorry. I'm an asshole.

You really were a jerk.

I forgive you.

They were all clamoring for attention, but he didn't know where one left off and another began.

"Are you hungry?" Apparently, he'd settled for banal. "Bones said you'd been up earlier, that Spock was here, but then he gave you some meds."

"No. He isn't hungry." Bones appeared at his shoulder, scowling at Jim before turning to Pike. "You aren't hungry." He nodded as if that were that. "I've got him on an IV supplement and appetite suppressants. He can't swallow very well yet, and I don't want to interfere with his throat healing."

The subject matter was grim, but Jim had to suppress a smile because Bones’ bedside manner was dismal. "Can he talk?"

"I'm right here." Pike's voice was raw, but it was strong enough to make Jim jump a bit. Bones just ignored him, however. And if Pike looked a bit pissy over that, Jim couldn't blame him.

"As long as he isn't reciting the Federation Declaration of Intent and all thirty-six amendments. You get an hour. Tops. He begins to look tired, you're out." He stalked off with a parting eyebrow, leaving the curtain half open to make some sort of point probably only Bones fully understood.

“Christ, he scares me.” Pike sounded disgruntled, but not in his typical way. Not one that Jim understood. Had a funny look on his face, beyond the tiredness of healing, that shifted between Bones and Jim, something conflicted. Something aware, though aware of what, Jim wasn't sure.

“He scares a lot of people.”

“You?”

Pike seemed genuinely interested, so Jim answered genuinely in turn, finding an even keel in a conversation that had no schematic. “Sometimes.” No need to go into the why. Pike didn't need to know that Jim was usually scared for Bones. Bones was too sensitive, with too many chinks in his armor.

“How do you two do it?” Pike's emphasis seemed significant.

“Do what?”

“Live with so much tension? It’s thicker than Guinness.”

Jim sat up a little more in not-quite-surprise.

“Hell. I’m sorry.” Pike ran his hand over his face, scrubbing at his eyes. “Ignore it. None of my business.”

But Jim found himself answering anyway, mouth operating independently of his mind. “It’s like a tesseract. Too many dimensions. Hard to visualize. Don't know where to grab hold.” He thought for a moment. “But potentially awesome.”

Pike looked grimmer than usual for a moment, and Jim had seen that look before. From whom? It was something like jealousy, something like resignation- a poison pressed from pretty flowers. It shocked him, shifted his paradigms, because even though Pike had apologized, he’d never really believed it, hadn’t really seen it, until now.

It shook him. He hadn't thought...

“You’re lucky,” Pike said. And sometimes Jim hated himself, because he was a dick. Because for a moment all he could think of was yeah, I can walk.

But he only said, “How so?”

He expected Pike to blast everything wide open with a few well turned words, putting it all out there, not letting him ignore it just a bit longer, but his good fortune held. Pike knew where he'd been leading. It might have been strategic, but he still backed off, with a bit of bite added in proxy. “Lucky that he’s happy with medical. If he went into command we’d both be out of work. Captain.”

Jim could feel his face flush with pink. A hell of a thing to be embarrassed about, and Pike's lopsided, wry smirk was not helping. “You aren’t out of work. Bones says you’ll be mobile within a few weeks. And I’m only here till we’re safely in dock.”

“I've been getting reports."

Jim just bet he was. He wondered what Spock had said. "Then you know you'll be fit for duty by the time Enterprise is out of repair dock." If anything, Pike's smirk deepened, but Jim knew better than to find anything resembling mirth there now. He could taste the bitter on the end of his tongue and Pike hadn't even touched on the real shit yet. And he knew it would be shit, felt it like a tesla coil striking sparks on his intestinal wall.

"Don’t be naïve, Jim. This temporal shift changes everything. Vulcan’s gone. The Klingons and the Romulans are going to be on us like jackals if they aren't at each other's throats after the destruction of the Klingon armada. Enterprise was slated for a long-term first contact and science mission. That’s been blown to hell. She’s going to get put to work near the neutral zone now. Military and Diplo work. The only way she'll get the Deep Five is to cultivate planets with large dilithium deposits.”

“What does that have to do with your ability to captain a-“

“Klingons. Romulans. They’re Darwinist cultures. You know that. They won’t recognize me. In their eyes, I have no authority till I’m on my feet and one hundred percent.”

Oh shit. Shit. “It’s temporary. Bones said not much more than a year, year and a half.” He was trying to keep his voice level and professional, but knew he was telegraphing what he felt way too much. He tried to even it out by channeling everything into the hand clenched against his thigh, but his white grip did little to alleviate the climbing scale of his protests.

“Not when this ship needs to be out there yesterday.”

 “That’s-“

“Jim. Where she’s going, I can’t follow.”

Jim rose to his feet, outrage twisting his face into an uncomfortable rictus as he snarled. “This isn’t right. You’re fine! IDIC. Captain Silpa-archa has three prosthetics and he’s been decorated more than-“

“And he’ll either get a lateral transfer to Earth, or a promotion to admiral.”

How could he look so calm? So stoic?

How could he be looking at Jim like that? Like Jim was the one to slightly pity?

“It’s not right.”

“I didn’t say it was right. I said it was realistic. It’s the hard choice. But the only one.” And there. Jim finally saw it as Pike blinked a little too long. Sadness. Resignation flitting for a moment before it was abandoned.

Jim sat back down, slowly, still absorbing the impact of it all- the abrupt about-face his 'Fleet view had taken. He still felt the need to protest, but the emphasis shifted. More introspective. Less the bystander. “You haven’t spoken to the Admiralty yet. I know Bones hasn’t cleared it. You don’t know what they’ll decide.”

“No. But I know what my decision would be, and I’d question their thought process if they made a different one."

"Chris. You don't understand."

"I've been there, Jim. And give me some credit, I know you."

If Jim had been in the right frame of mind he would have wondered at that, but he could only deal with emotional fallout on so many levels before some were jettisoned as dead weight. "Fuck. No. You love it. You fucking love it." And he did. Jim knew that from the first dare, Chris' love letter to Starfleet. Obsession so deep, so unique, Jim wanted to taste it every bit as much as he wanted to mock it for existing." And I love this ship. And the crew. Love them like crazy. But being captain-"

"Jim."

"And it's not the paperwork or any of the bureaucracy." Jim wasn't looking at him anymore, chose to stare through the half-pulled curtains to his right, hand massaging the back of his own neck in a futile effort to relieve some tension. This was too close to the bone. "But you need to stay here. They need you."

"Jim. I love the ship. I love the crew. But I'm not going to lie. I love the command as well."

"Then why?" Jim did look up at this, wanting to challenge Chris just as he'd been challenged to do better. "Fight to keep it."

"I do love the power of command. Love it maybe too much." Chris sighed, and shook his head. "I've got to think of the crew.”

"I hate it a little." It was a confession of wrongdoing, Jim knew it. And the penitent ring of it sounded false to his own ears. He wondered what Chris thought, but was too scared to ask. "It's all on me. My decisions. Mine. I had to make them. I had to make those choices- because it needed to be done and I was the only one that could step up. But I keep asking myself what would have happened if I had been wrong?"

How did Chris do this for years?

"I hate it a little too, but I'm good at it. And I don't trust the crew and the ship I love to anyone who would do less, so you need to be here."

Chris shook his head, but Jim continued. "Maybe I just need time. Maybe I just need more experience to get comfortable with it. But not if you're on Earth with your thumb up your ass."

"I'll let you in on a little secret, Jim. Something the Academy can't teach. No one should be comfortable with it. No one." Pike's eyes went distant and strange, like he was just seeing a truth for the first time. "And that's why you'll be a better captain than I ever was."

Jim went still. "You don't really think that."

"I don't think it. I know it." Chris let that hang in the air for a moment before he seemed to center himself. "And deep down, so do you."

The bio-bed's remote adjustment shifted with a flick of Chris' thumb, raising him a little more upright so that they were eye to eye. Jim met that tritanium gaze with his own, sizing up the invisible gauntlet dangling between them.

For Jim, it was deadly serious. A weight to be carried.

For Chris...

"Now...are you going to report, or stand there looking like I fucked you without a reach-around?"

"You- you..." Jim gaped at him a moment, expression crooked and disbelieving, before bending over, forehead near his knees.

"Jim?" Pike sounded concerned as Jim started to shake.

He tried, but he couldn't contain it- the laughter shook him to the core, sloppy, strangling guffaws stole his breath and threatened to asphyxiate him. He hugged his knees and laughed and laughed and laughed until the laughter burnt all its fuel and left his mouth split wide over his teeth.

"Jesus, Jim. Don't do that to me. I thought you were crying." Pike raised his eyebrows, gathering them in the middle. His sigh was light, sounding both disgruntled and relieved.

"Ha. Ha ha ha. No." Jim looked up, grin splitting his face. Fucking irony, you bitch goddess.

Goddamn.

The last few months had felt like an eternity.

Maybe everything before it, too.

Life- an asymptote- he got close to happiness, but not tangential to it until he reached infinity. He hadn't reached that threshold yet, but now. Now it seemed less impossible, like he could reach out and touch it without it being snatched away at the last second.

Which was...kind of awesome.

Really, really awesome.

"Chris." Jim couldn't keep the smile from his voice, either, and Pike returned the smile with a smaller, partially drugged one of his own.

It was better than anything had a right to be right now. "Chris. Don't you get tired of all this unrelenting angst?"

And once again, to his delight, Chris was able to follow his tangential thoughts. "Just call me an eternal optimist. And screw being upright." Pike lowered the incline of the biobed and shut his eyes, though his entire manner still screamed alert. Capable.

Screw being handicapped anyway.

"Now brief me."

"Sounds dirty."

"Shut up." Pike opened one eye into a slit. "Captain."

And yeah. He was. How the hell had that happened?

  
 **  
Chapter 11**

 _  
****  
_

**  
_Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding. ~ Kahlil Gibran_   
**

 

 

He moved down the corridor at a fast clip, which was usually enough to shake an unwanted extra, but he hadn't counted on the sheer cussedness of Vulcans. "You say one more goddamn derogatory thing about humans, and I swear-"

"Quite often, Doctor."

"I swear." Len halted his stomping in the middle of the walkway to turn his head and glare at Spock. "Don't give me any of that bull about illogical humans and how primitive we are."

"Doctor McCoy, it was not my intent to imply such a thing. I-"

Len rounded on him fully, hands clenched, raising an eyebrow. "I know you didn't imply it. You said it straight out. And it's bullshit, Spock." He took a step closer, getting into the Vulcan's space, knowing how uncomfortable they could be with close proximity to others. Spock's expression didn't change, but it had to stick in his craw, he just wasn't telegraphing it. "Bullshit."

Spock just looked more butter-wouldn't-melt-in-his-mouth stoic, if that were possible, and it pissed him off something fierce. "I may be an asshole, but I’m an educated asshole. I’ve read all about pre-Surakian Vulcan. What was that about human history again?" He raised his other eyebrow to match the one crawling up Spock's forehead. "Primitive warmongering? Angry primates?"

"This conversation is devolving. I must insist-"

The monotone was as bad as the lack of expression. "Insist all you like. Dress it up all you like, but it's still just lipstick on a pig." He turned and stalked down the corridor again, at an even faster pace than before, but Spock wouldn't take the hint, and continued his pursuit.

"Doctor."

"Fallacious logic, Spock," he called over his shoulder. "Awfully hypocritical too."

"Doctor."

When he reached sickbay he stood in the entrance, one arm thrown across it, palm against the wall to bar entry. There was a pause as he looked down, taking a deep breath, trying to calm.

"If you would-"

"Oh, just blow it out your ass."

He didn't even stop to check out how well Spock was processing that particular human idiom, just walked into his office and sealed the entry with his code.

His back was to the door, and he contemplated the desk and the padd of paperwork briefly. The dead, and everyone who had been injured beyond secondary bay's ability to fix, were being transferred to the Bertrand Russell. 124 people, leaving the ship with a complement of just over 300, all stretched thin, on too little sleep and too little support. He was waiting for the current transfers to get settled into the new ship before sending over the few in stasis. He was leaving Pike till last, since he knew Jim would want a final briefing and a few words with him before their departure.

If this had been an ordinary mission, he'd be overseeing the reconstruction of the primary sickbay, but Scotty couldn't spare the manpower, and this smaller bay covered most of their needs for the remainder of their trip. They'd applied the Pareto principle, making sure that the top 20% of all sickbay services were online. It would have to be enough.

But this wasn't an ordinary mission. And these weren't ordinary casualties, if they could ever be called ordinary. His eyes automatically gravitated to one person at that thought.

The bed in the corner was in full view of his small window, but the divide seemed like too much at the moment. Spock had gone, and Leonard had a mountain of work, but he couldn’t help but open the door again.

He leaned against the wall next to his office, arms crossed in a way that said 'keep away' in bold sans-serif. The scowl on his face was deeper than usual, darker. The irritation was subcutaneous. The urge to do something itched at him in an unfamiliar way; not heebie-jeebies or woolen underwear, but something deeper and unsettling that he chose not to examine too closely.

That he was looking at the area that held Pike's bed escaped no one's notice, he was sure of it, but the nurses had been cowed into submission after days of him being a bastard and kept their heads down. They might not like him for his shiny personality, but they respected the hell out of him, and that was enough at the moment. He allowed himself some time to brood before stalking over to the biobed that held the recumbent figure.

He'd had to brood on it for a bit, stew in his own juices.

Pike looked so still. Colorless, bloodless. Broken and gray-scale. Len didn't want to see it. Didn't want to pity him. Didn't want to see the opportunistic bastard as anything other than a bastard. It was easier that way.

When Pike tensed, eyes fluttering open, Leonard couldn't stop himself from pushing forward. His feet took him to the biobed on autopilot, where he went through the usual cycle of readouts. Everything was standard, except for the bile that kept foaming in his gut, acidic and angry.

"How'm I doing?"

Leonard ignored him, but his skin tightened all over, miming the drawn line of his lips. It was for Pike's sake as much as his own that he kept silent. He didn't trust himself, or the moment. Didn't want to raise the bastard's heart rate. He wasn't worried about Pike coding under his care, was well beyond that point, but he wanted the tests done without everything going cattywhumpus.

"McCoy."

Drug reaction was normal. Brain function, typical. Notes for the nurses on the transfer prep, including a remote arterial blood gas before and after onset of medical coma.

"McCoy."

Spine, the same. Make sure the team on the Russell knows not to...

"Leonard."

"It's Doctor McCoy, or acting CMO McCoy, or whatever the 'Fleet is calling me this week."

"I might not be your captain at the moment, but I'm still a captain. Answer me." Pike's face, already heavily lined with exhaustion, deepened its crags as he scowled.

Something in Len's chest twisted, but he answered all the same, knowing deep in his gut that his momma would be ashamed. Just like he knew there wasn't anything he could do about it, either. "Fine. Acute desiccation of discs at C3 and C4. Acute herniation at C4 and C5 affecting the spinal canal and nerve roots. Acute inflammation at C4 and C5 due to toxins. We’ve replaced the discs, but it’s a temporary solution." He kept his voice as clipped and precise as possible.

"Layman speak?"

"Your neck is all fucked up." Though he had a suspicion that Pike knew exactly what he was talking about. The man was as well read as Jim, kept up with Jim, and if that thought didn't put a frown on his face, he didn't know what would.

"A little less layman, please."

"The same as it was before. There’s a better fix, but we can’t do it here. No improvement, but you aren't losing any ground, either. Same prognosis. And you can thank me for the fact that you still have motor function in your hands." Leonard shifted, uncrossing his arms and leaning forward to get a closer look as Pike flexed his fingers and then his wrists in reaction to his words.

"What was that about the toxins?" Still drumming those fingers, and Len had to look away, because he didn't want to sympathize, didn't want to care for this man as if he was any other patient, more than any other patient.

"It's localized, we were able to contain it with an absorbent polymer that created an elastic fence around the area. The venom is corrosive, but sticky like napalm. The pain that these machines are bypassing for you? Caused by the venom. I don't have the equipment to get rid of it all, it was destroyed at 40 Eridani."

Yet another thing he hated about Starfleet. It was like the north and the south all over again. The rest of the goddamn universe would remember it as the Battle of Vulcan, because they named battles after the closest planet. Starfleet depersonalized it like any other military juggernaut, and named battles after the nearest star. He wondered how long it would be before the star got sucked into the black hole as well. Instead of a bronze plaque, 40 Eridani would get a big black nothing.

"But you could do it?" Pike smoothed his hands down the blanket, but Leonard was pretty good at scenting nervous reactions, and wondered at it for a moment. He was cautious with his reply, but figured Pike had to know the answer already.

"Yes. On Earth, at SFM. If I tried it by hand with what I have now, you’d end up a quadriplegic. There are plenty of good surgeons there that--"

"I want you to perform the surgery."

"No. Not possible." An emphatic hell no.

"I'm not giving you the choice, here."

Leonard pressed close, face hovering over Pike's, voice a hiss to fly under the nurses’ radar. "You said it yourself. You aren't my captain at the moment, or for the foreseeable future. I don't have to do jack shit." He needed Pike to back off from this. He needed distance. He needed insulation. He was tired of caring.

"On Earth. You're doing the procedure."

"On Earth, I'm probably going to get tossed in the brig. Or did you forget the scene on the bridge?"

"I'm going to request you, and I'm going to get you. You talked about credit before, when you were threatening me in my apartment. Well I just bought a bunch from the Romulans, and I'm going to cash some of it in for the best medical treatment available to me. That means you."

"Really? You really want me messing around your neck and head with a laser? Shesset and Dilori are just as good and they don't have an axe to grind."

"You once said that Shesset and Dilori would stare at a can of orange juice because it said concentrate."

"I lied."

"You pioneered a neural grafting technique; it’s a big noise in some circles."

"Big whoop, you read my paper."

"Your earlier research wasn't on neural grafting, though. It focused a lot on spinal injury."

Leonard froze for a moment before forcing himself to relax, but he knew it was already too late. Pike had seen his reaction. If he knew about that, then he probably knew exactly why he'd pursued the neural grafting research with such focus and determination. Probably knew a lot more than Leonard was comfortable with. He hadn’t minded telling Jim. By that point, everything of Jim’s past had been spread out for him, whether Jim wanted it or not. So Leonard had shared the pain of his father’s death with someone who could really understand it-- but that had been his choice, and his spin on it. He didn’t know what Pike had gotten out of an impersonal dossier. "What of it?"

"I want the best to give myself the best odds, and that's you. And I know you don't want to end up in the brig."

He should have known. A small softening, a tentative detente, and Pike throws it in his face. "Turn about is fair play? Is that what this is? I blackmail you so you want a little of your own back? Why should I care about ending up in the brig? You and I both know I don't buy into the party line hoo-rah bullshit. I don't need this commission. Gimme a conduct unbecoming and boot me. I'll be in a tidy little practice on Risa before you can say don't let the door hit you in the ass."

"You don't think much of me, do you? I know I haven't shown you my best, but no. No, this isn't about blackmail. I already knew you were too good of a man to follow through on that. On the blackmail, or the threat. But this isn't about the commission either. The commission isn't what you care about at all."

Those words hung in the air between them for a moment, short, but dense and muffling everything else. It seemed to encompass all of sickbay for a hair's breadth before the sound returned to fill the void. Leonard felt his hackles rise, and pulled the curtain around the bed. He had a feeling that this would require privacy. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"If I request you, you're latinum plated. They won't touch you except to ask where you want to be posted."

Oh, the conniving bastard. "And?"

"You're just as fucked up as he is, aren't you?"

Leonard knew exactly who he meant. "Leave Jim out of this."

"I joked about it before, but it's true."

"You can go to hell."

"You're worried, damned worried. Almost coming out of your skin wondering if you'll even get stationed within ten quadrants of him. That's why you're so hell-bent on tearing a strip off me."

"I don't have to listen to this." He wanted to stop listening, start fighting back, but Pike's words rained down on him like cinders, scorching away any useful argument, leaving only schoolyard defenses behind.

"You do this for me and you get to choose. A cozy little planetside...or a flagship carrying a Kirk."

“If they let him-“

“They will.”

"You think you can buy me?"

"Everyone can be bought, if you know what kind of capital to offer. And I've got it. Not that it'll make you happy."

Happy? What did he ever know about happy? Happy was a little girl in Georgia, or swinging into the pond on a rope on a summer evening; the flash of blue eyes and a wide grin. It was isolated events, anomalies instead of a steady chain. Happy was a goddamn phantom, ghosts you couldn't grab without bone-chattering cold to show for the effort.

"Don't pretend you know me. And don't pretend you need me to do this. You know there are others that are just as capable, so I don't see what you get out of it other than me owing you a favor. And I'm not quite sure why-- you know I'm not going to back off in gratitude."

"You do this, you won't owe me anything. As long as you keep doing your job and keep him alive."

"Ah."

"What's that mean?"

"Sudden clarity of thought. A fucking light bulb. Hallelujah."

"I need someone I can trust to have his back."

"And that's me?" Leonard snorted. They both knew he'd have Jim's back with or without Pike's input, but Leonard couldn't imagine why Pike was trusting him. With his spine...or Jim.

"I'm under no illusions that you'll do it for me. You'll do it for him. But mostly, you'll do it for yourself. It's nice to know you're just as self-centered as the rest of us mortals."

"Now wait just a damn minute!"

"But it won't make you happy." Pike narrowed his eyes, crow's feet fanning out in suspicion. He was calculating and frightening, and too, too perceptive, and goddamn, when would he just shut the fuck up? "I wonder if you have the fortitude. Because you'll be scraping him off of every planet he comes in contact with, and sewing him back together. Think you can handle that, McCoy?"

"That just proves you don't know me at all. You think I'm gonna angst about him getting fucked up on missions all the time; angst enough to leave him?"

And that was the root of the matter wasn't it?

Growing up, Leonard was always the protector; he took everyone under his wing. The uncool kids, stray puppies; it didn’t matter. His mother had lived in fear of yet another animal following him home. When he’d met Jocelyn, she’d needed protecting from her big, bad ex, and he’d been more than happy to do it. And when Jo had been born, that feeling had increased to the Nth power.

In one fell swoop, that had all been lost. Taken for granted, then gone.

He’d come to Starfleet, drunk and desperate, completely rudderless. He’d been in no shape to take care of himself, let alone someone else, and then, out of the blue, Jim Kirk had fallen into his lap-- bruised and broken and grinning like a madman too stupid to know there was nothing worth grinning over. The fact that there was somebody worse off than Len, more emotionally unavailable, was a revelation.

So he’d taken care of Jim. Patched him up. Told him when he was being a jackass. Made sure he ate a salad with his lunches. Studied with him. Bitched at him. And in return, Jim thought the sun shone out of his ass. He was someone’s hero again, and that felt good. Damn good.

Building up Jim had an interesting side effect: it built Len back up too, brick by brick. He drank less. He cared more. His work was interesting and useful again, instead of just habit. A lot of people at ‘Fleet Medical might laugh at the idea, but he was less caustic than he’d been since his marriage started to founder.

It was a smack to the back of the head. Apparently, he wasn’t anyone without something to nurture.

And now? He was afraid that his sense of self was so tied up in Jim, was Jim, that there was no way to separate the two. It was almost like Stockholm Syndrome, except Leonard didn't know which of them was at fault. Siamese twins sharing too many organs. Mutual parasites-- there was no healthy metaphor for it. He was afraid to find out what would happen if there was no Jim; didn’t want to return to that pre-Jim purgatory and find out there was no Doctor McCoy either. And that honestly scared him, because he found no clear delineation between what was want and what was need.

He was too proud for this codependent shit.

Angst enough to leave Jim? Ha."Well think again, darlin', because the truth is that I never planned on being happy anyway. So fuck you.” Even as he said it, he didn’t know if it was true. He’d given up on happy a long time ago, but it seemed like he’d been ignoring its renewed existence for a while, ignored it till it had snuck up behind him and delivered a sucker punch.

"So you'll do it?"

"Do I have a choice?" No. No choice at all.

"You already answered that question, and I'm done being your punching bag. I've made all of the apologies that I'm going to, and I'm not going to wear a hair shirt for the rest of my life over a bad mistake in judgment. This way we all get what we want."

"He's twice the man you'll ever be."

"Perfectly illustrates the difference between you and me. At least I know I'm not good enough for him."

"No. That's not it. If it was, there wouldn't be any difference between us at all. You still aren't getting a second chance with him. Not while I'm still breathing."

"Did you tell him that?"

"I don't think I have to."

"You tried to warn me once, and I was stupid enough not to listen, so I hope you listen to me, now. He’s his own man, and I think he deserves to decide what he wants for himself, don't you?"

“Don’t be so cliché. Set a bird free-- I’ve heard it before. You still aren't going to come within ten feet of him, you hear me?"

"Struck a nerve?" Pike's crooked smirk deepened at the crease. "I know you won’t believe this, but I think a lot of you. A hell of a lot. But I have to ask, for your sake, and his. Are you worried about losing Jim? Or are you worried about losing your crutch?"

"You rotten son of a bitch. What did I tell you about keeping your legs?"

There was a small sound behind him, and a crazy knowing crawled up his spine even before the biobed curtain was pulled aside. Jim stood there, smart and polished in a borrowed uniform, half-healed bruises peeking over the collar. His face shuttered, but not before Leonard could parse the emotions that cycled across his features for a moment. Concern. Disbelief. Anger. Disappointment.

God.

"Bones!"

***

"What the hell was that?"

Jim had drug him down the hall and into Puri's room-- he still hadn't been able to think of it as his room. As soon as the door had shut Jim rounded on him, livid and...

"What?" Leonard honestly didn't know why Jim would look so pained. Mad, yes. But not...hurt.

"You threatened Pike?"

"It wasn't what you think. He--"

"Did you, or did you not, threaten a commanding officer?"

"No! I threatened him as a man. His rank has nothing to do with this."

"Dammit, Bones! It has everything to do with it. It's Pike! You know what he--" Jim cut off abruptly, but rallied. "We're both on thin ice. Delta Vega style thin ice. All he has to do is file a complaint--"

"He won't file a complaint."

"How do you know that?"

"The same way he knew I couldn't blackmail him. He's a good man!"

As soon as the words left his mouth he could feel the color leave his face, his diaphragm buckle in his abdomen. Jim stepped back on his heel, eyes widening beneath a week's worth of furrowed brow. Leonard stared at Jim’s face, as Jim watched the horror bloom on Leonard’s. It became almost an infinite loop, with Jim’s reaction deepening his own, morphing and shaping it into a fist hammering in his gut.

Shit, goddamn and fuck. This is exactly why he hadn’t wanted to work on Pike. He’d known the man needed his expertise, but he’d railed against it anyway, because deep down he knew what kind of man Pike was, despite the hard attitude and the stripes and the inglorious fuck up. Leonard had reduced him to two dimensions, a villain on paper, a gold shirt and a predatory nature, even in the face of so much evidence otherwise.

Taking a stand. Apologizing. Doing what was right. Letting Jim be Jim. Bravery-- so much bravery and sacrifice and fuck.

Leonard felt sick to his stomach.

"Then how do you justify that?” Jim demanded. “I don't know what you told him, but from what little I heard, it wasn't anything good."

"No. Nothing good." Whenever Len was faced with a growing mountain of hurt, he tended to turn to alcohol. If he couldn’t do that, he tried to detach. Even now, he could feel familiar threads lose their tensile strength and slip away.

"He apologized, Bones. A real apology. So you’d better make sure that yours sings like a love letter."

"I know."

"And you owe one to Spock, too."

Leonard starts laughing at that, couldn't help it, because irony on top of irony on top of irony. "Spock was right, you know. He was right. Primitive warmongering, angry primates and all."

"What?"

"You know what's going to happen, Jim? How it'll happen?"

"You gonna tell me?"

"They're going to throw a party for us. A big gala. Return of the victorious heroes."

"Don't."

"You feel like a victorious hero, Jim?"

"Don't do this right now."

"Because I sure don't. Do you know where the word gala comes from? It's from gallows. People would throw a big party and watch the hanging."

Jim obviously didn't know what to make of Leonard's black humor, or the way he was still smiling.

"And Spock was right, because we're still Neanderthals hitting each other with rocks. We just dress it up all genteel now and call it diplomacy. If he's smart, he'll find himself a group of Vulcans, get the hell out of Dodge, and forget he was ever half human."

"Is that what your bickering with him was about?"

“Bicker with him? I don’t even want to speak to him.” He could only detach so much, and the idea of Jim devoured on a distant moon and never heard from again…it curdled any good intentions he might have had.

“In the other universe--“

“I’m sure the other him never tried to kill you in front of me! You can probably forgive him. Hell, you seem used to people wanting you dead. But I can’t stomach him. That’s what you get, repressing all the shit that comes with life. I grouch-- he sits on it till it explodes and the next thing you know you’re shat onto a ball of ice or strangled.  You think I won’t piss him off to that point if I try to play house with him? Fuck him.”

“He is mad with much learning.”

“What did I tell you about the Shakespeare?”

“Petronius Arbiter.”

“Same damn thing.”

"You called him a pusillanimous fuckwit."

"I thought he'd appreciate big words! I've got non-euclidian asshat saved up for next time.” Leonard closed his eyes, took deep breaths and attempted to get himself under control. He dialed back his voice from the previous shouting and tried for measured instead. “Look, Jim. It doesn't matter. What's one more rule broken when they're gonna throw the book at me anyway."

"I talked to him. He isn't going to file a complaint. He--" Jim pulled a face at him, and shook his head, crossing his arms over his chest in emotional defense. “He tried to kill himself, Bones.”

“Jim, he was rescuing the elders.”

“Listen to me. I need you to be Dr. McCoy, physician and psychologist right now, not Bones." Jim's eye's sharpened, catching his and holding him, driving home how serious he was. "Essential causality; you say tohmahtoh. This is some really basic stuff, here."

"What are you trying to say? Don't pussyfoot." And yeah, he was mad. This is the first time he could recall Jim questioning his expertise. Maybe he’d given him reason-- he wasn’t feeling goddamn professional right now, but he’d been trying to have Jim’s back, dammit, and this made him wonder if Jim truly had his.

"He was trying to kill himself. The Narada. He tried to pilot straight into it. The Enterprise was there, but he didn’t call for a beam out. He was going to pull a Kelvin."

“Christ.” No wonder Jim was…

“Yeah. Fucking ironic. So cut him a little more slack, please. He’s hurting, but he’s not showing it.”

"What's it to you? You were ready to claw his eyes out at the KM hearing. He dumped you on an iceberg full of dinosaurs. He strangled you. So why do you fucking care?"  The human brain was an odd machine. Scientists had been studying it for centuries and still weren’t completely sure how it functioned; and here Leonard was, with a front row seat to the horrorshow, exposing just how little he knew about his own mind. Staring into that abyss.

Everything was disjointed and fractured; there was a real chasm between what his brain was screaming at him and what his mouth was spouting and yet he could not stop. He cared. Of course he cared, that was what made him Leonard McCoy. But right now he must be the most selfish fuck in the universe, because what he felt about Pike, or Spock, or even Jim paled when compared to what Len was feeling at the moment. And right now, that feeling was hurt. And like a wounded bear, he was lashing back.

"You don't know him, Bones." Jim was stony, as if he knew what was coming and bracing for it.

"And suddenly you do?"

"Yes."

"Well, you're welcome to him."

"Bones!"

"While we’re at it, you're welcome to Pike, too." Self-hatred could be the only explanation for why Leonard was doing this, not only fighting with Jim, but offering up his worst rival in his place. Yet he couldn’t shut his fat fucking mouth as he dug his own grave, and it was getting less shallow by the minute.

This had been the beginning of the end with Jocelyn too, he thought. Fuck up compounding fuck up. An unwillingness to admit he was wrong wrong wrong. Mouth too sharp. Memory for what hurt most, too good.

“Don't be like this. I need you to stop it.”

But Leonard couldn’t stop himself. Had never been able to, not even to save his marriage. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Look at me.” Jim grabbed Bones by his biceps and turned him to face him.  “You need to stop doing this. I’m okay. I’m not going anywhere. You’ve always been there. You’ve always defended me.”

“I know.”

“But I need to defend myself now.”

Oh, how that hurt. He’d assumed that this was the sort of thing that would get easier with repetition, that you got used to your purpose being denied, but he’d been wrong about that as well. This hurt was like electrical shock; popular for torture because the human body could not acclimatize to the pain-- no matter how much or how often someone was exposed.

His father.

Jocelyn.

Joanna.

Leonard grabbed Jim by the forearms, hard enough to leave bruises that matched the ones from the battle. He shook Jim, hard, shocking himself to the core because for a moment there he wanted Jim to hurt. “Dammit, Jim! I don’t want you going off because of a wild hare-“

And Jim must have seen something in his face, because he wrenched away, defensive and angry, looking like all of his trust in Leonard was bleeding away. “I don’t need another father! Or another brother!”

I Don’t Need You.

Leonard recoiled as if struck.

He was struck. Maybe not physically, but deep down inside-- point blank to the heart. Center mass.

Jim averted his eyes, and took another step back, widening the gulf between them, seemingly impervious to the way Leonard had frozen. He dragged one hand through his hair before resting it on his neck, looking anywhere but at Leonard. “I need you with me, I do. Just, please. Let me make my own mistakes."

***

The room's gravity must have gone wrong. He cracked his eyes open, fighting the tenacious crust that glued his lids together. The room whirled three-quarters and then reset, only to do it again. And again. And again. He slammed his eyes shut and groaned, flailing one arm over towards where he guessed a bedside table might be. He smacked his hand on the corner before spidering his fingers over the edge, feeling around like a truffle pig until he made contact with a familiar cool cylinder. He eyed the cartridge to make sure he wasn't poisoning himself before pressing it into his neck, depressing the mechanism, allowing sweet relief to filter through his bloodstream.

It thrummed through his vascular system with each heartbeat, and he knew from long practice how long it would take to cycle through his body and kick in. One Mississippi. Two Mississippi. Three Mississippi. Like counting off after a bolt of lightning, even down to the static crawling over the flesh, and the clean, awful smell of ozone in his nostrils. Six Mississippi. Seven Mississippi.

It scrubbed some of the cobwebs away, enough to allow for clear thought. Memory recall.

Oh.

Oh shit.

He collapsed back onto the bed, bringing his palms up to his face, fingers rubbing at his temples.

Goddamnit.

His hand was shaking a bit, which was better than the palsied spasms of before, but now he couldn't blame it on the alcohol. What had happened? Intellectually, he knew how everything had gone down. Hell, he had known it was a traffic accident in the making, but he hadn’t been able to stop himself. He'd just been so fucking pissed off. For good reason, too. First Spock. And then Pike. And Jim...

Jim.

Leonard shifted to his back, one arm flung over his eyes. The recessed full-spectrum lights were preset to start brightening half an hour before the alarm sounded, mimicking the light of Sol cresting the horizon of Earth. They were about half-power now.

"Computer. Lights. Ten Percent. Set."

Two hours to beta shift. Two hours to figure out how he was going to get through the next week. Hell, the next few hours. For the first time in a long time, he didn't want to see the inside of a sickbay. And he sure as hell didn't want to see Pike's empty bed.

Things had been so crazy lately; so much had changed. He was the kind of guy that was good in a crisis, when shit needed to get done, but he wasn't an aftermath kind of guy, that much was obvious. He'd never been good with the bedside manner schtick, but he figured that saving someone's life beat making 'em smile in recovery.

Extrapolate the data from that, apply it to the USS Fubar, and this was what you got. He'd fucked up.

There hadn't been any downtime between one crisis and another. He'd gotten in a few hours of sleep, only to hit the ground running the next day. And the next. When he’d made it to the room, he had collapsed in the clothes he was wearing, not even making it under the covers before he passed out in a low-grade fog of antiseptic and blood, the smell that followed him into his dreams.

Everyone was working a shift and a half, or doubles, to make up for the depleted crew, and that barely left time for sleeping and eating, never-mind anything personal. Scotty had pulled some major miracles out of his ass to get them to full impulse, but the repairs they were capable of making were ongoing, and that meant a sickbay chock full of engineers with more balls than brains.

Some people needed alone time to process new data, rewrite their worldview. He hadn't had it. Or sleep. Or much of any simple comfort in god knows how long. That night in bed with Jim was almost a working week ago, and the memory was getting more distant with every hour as they passed in the hallways, barely exchanging greetings, working opposite shifts. Both worn thin, worn raw. Responsibility like sandpaper when what they really needed was a plaster cast. And then last evening-- the first time they’d seen each other in what seemed to be forever, Jim had turned away.

Things were changing between him and Jim. And between them and Pike, in a way that scared him. Mapping new territory did that. Jim and Pike were equals now, in every way, and he was just learning that Jim and Leonard might not be as balanced an equation as he first thought.

The change started long before the Narada, though he'd been too mulish and ornery to acknowledge it. Pike had manned up like he still had a pair, no excuses or evasions. And hell, that was something even Leonard couldn't say he sparkled at, not after the divorce.

He managed to make it to the edge of the bed before throwing up. The hypospray helped the symptoms of a hangover, but it didn't always negate every side effect. His stomach wrung itself out, the burn and the scent sharp salt sweet in his sinuses, until he was dry-heaving acid. It'd be easy to blame the bourbon, but he'd drunk more and held on to his dignity before. Had become an old hand at it for the hazy period between officially separated and officially Starfleet.

But he hadn't drunk to forget like that in a long time.

Not since signing on.

Not since Jim.

The bitter irony that he had confiscated a bottle of booze because of Jim...well, it wouldn't be making him laugh anytime soon. Not after recalling the night's drunken epiphany.

Because he couldn't blame Pike, or Jim. Couldn't even blame Spock, no matter how much he'd like to. And that left only one other person.

Leonard stumbled into the bathroom and leaned against the counter because his legs still didn't feel up to supporting his full weight. He gripped the counter until his knuckles paled and looked at himself. Sallow complexion. Bloated bags underneath eyes that he could only suppose were bloodshot, since he couldn’t meet them in the mirror. Guilt. Hopelessness. The taste of vomit in his throat as his Adam's apple worked.

He touched the reflective surface with unsteady fingers, tracing lines that seemed to have materialized overnight. He’d been told, more than once, that he was an attractive man, and his brain knew it was true even if something else inside of him scoffed at the notion. But as he took in the creases, and the stubble and the angry downturn of his lips, he had to wonder if he was in yet another alternative universe-- one where he was Dorian Grey, because it surely looked like his outsides were catching up with his insides.

Somehow, somewhere, he’d lost his way. He’d confused the role of protector with ownership, which was as dehumanizing as anything he’d known.

Pike had let Jim go and watched him soar. Leonard was still trying to keep Jim locked up tight.

The mirror was a highly polished sheet metal, he found, after punching it with a clenched fist and expecting it to shatter. Instead of fracturing in a web, the metal surface warped, creating a crazy funhouse caricature of his face, making his reflection just as ugly as he felt.

The swollen knuckles and bloody fist? That was just gravy.

 

 **Chapter 12**

 ****

 **  
_“It takes more courage to reveal insecurities than to hide them, more strength to relate to people than to dominate them, more 'manhood' to abide by thought-out principles rather than blind reflex. Toughness is in the soul and spirit, not in muscles and an immature mind.” ~ Alex Karras_   
**

 

 

He’d given himself another shot to clear the rest of the hangover, and sucked down some fluids to rehydrate himself a bit past mummified. He thought about leaving his hand, swollen and hurting and fucking deserving it, but a CMO didn’t have the luxury of self-flagellation, so he attached a regen bumblebee so he could stew through its steady hum.

He managed to com Chapel, letting her know he would be out for the first quarter of his shift and not totally alienating her in the process, but everything beyond that was brooding-- the likes of which he usually only reached when fully liquored up and in a snit. Which was probably part of the problem.

It was a productive brood, though, and at the end he had a list of things that needed doing.

He dressed with careful economy, not wanting to fuck with what chemicals and technology had just fixed, then grabbed a flat, expanding it into a small box. In went the whiskey, then the glasses, and, after a moment’s consideration, even his flask.  The box felt too light as he walked it down the corridor, especially since it seemed to carry the burden of last night’s failures, at least in his head. He knew that the alcohol had come after, when the damage had already been done, but it was tied together in his mind, a synthesis of all the bad, and he couldn’t part one from the other.

He had no stomach for it.

“Scotty!”

His forced march took him to the angry bowels of the ship, where the tech-monkeys congregated to do engineering stuff. It was slightly gratifying, the way they all jumped at the sound of his voice as he called for their malevolent overlord.

He’d come to an understanding with Scotty, a byproduct of being the older, jaded cranks on a ship full of the young and naive. Scotty did his best to not kill his ensigns, and Leonard patched them up while giving them the verbal dressing down they all needed and deserved for being too stupid to live.

“Scotty!” Apparently, the tech-monkeys were more educable than he thought, because most of them bolted at the sound of his voice.

“Aye! Could have just commed me.” Scotty’s voice was close, but muffled, and when Len looked down, he found him, under a console, face obscured by a mess of tri-colored wiring.

“Scotty. Got something for ya.”

Scotty pulled himself forward on the frictionless slider, pushing the wires to the side so that he could blink at Len with interest and a grin. “Oh?” The grin held for a moment then lost its structural integrity as he got a good look at the brown study of Len’s face, the firm set of his jaw. “Oh.” Monty raised his eyebrows as he took in the box as well. “Let’s see it then.”

Len sat the box next to him and flipped the lid so Scotty could lean over and check out the contents.

“Oh.” He drew out the vowel, as if he’d come to an understanding. “It’s like that, is it?”

“Just--” Len huffed, uncomfortable with the fact that Scotty probably saw a hell of a lot more than Len gave him credit for. “Take it.”

Scotty’s eyes were serious for a moment, but then he grinned in an abrupt about face. “Sure, Doctor McCoy. But I gotta tell ya’. I don’t usually put out till the third date. Me mam, y’see. She raised me to--”

Scotty dodged to the side, narrowly avoiding the toe of Len’s boot. He smiled at the move, though, and Len figured that was because he’d accomplished his task, making Leonard crack a smile. A small one, still sad, but it was there.

“Just take it. And forget about it.” Len glared, just because he could.

“Sure, sure. And just, so’s you know, if you feel the need to share a glass...”

“No. Thanks, but I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“No?”

“No.” Len looked at a glowing little readout that promised to toggle between power supplies. “I’ve got some stuff to consider. I don’t need anything to interfere with that.”

“Well then.” Scotty picked up the box and tipped it to Len in a toast. “Best of luck to ya’ then, Doctor.”

“Yeah. Best of luck to me.”

He’d need it. Item one had been crossed from the list and item two was looming large: he needed to find Spock.

This was going to suck balls.

***

It took a few days to get some alone time with Spock, but he had gone through official channels and scheduled a half hour block for groveling. He assumed Spock could have seen him sooner, but he also assumed that Spock drew it out on purpose to get Len to squirm a little. Or maybe Len just assumed that because he thought everyone was as petty as Len himself could be when in high dudgeon.

It wasn’t outside the realm of possibility.

If it was pettiness, damn if it wasn’t working. In the three days he’d been waiting, he’d imagined almost every scenario possible for this apology, with half of the imaginary Spocks saying something like “Apologies are illogical,” and a few (just a few) deciding to throttle him for good measure.

Len couldn’t blame any of them.

He’d wanted to apologize to Pike first, but he’d been put into a medical coma and transferred to the relief ship, out of Len’s hands. There’d been no opportunities for apologies, so there had been no way to make Len feel less weasel-like on that front.

He’d never been to Spock’s office, but he found it easily enough, wedged in between astrometrics and science storage. It was small, and simple and gave Len a headache with its logicality. Everything was white and it must’ve been a bitch to clean except that Spock probably never made a mess in his life, probably even kept his playdoh from mixing colors or getting funny hairs in it when he was a kid, and why the hell was he here again?

“Commander Spock?” Christ, this was as bad as med school, when he’d had to beg that Bolian Prof for an extension.

“Lieutenant Commander McCoy.” Spock’s voice was a perfect monotone with absolutely no inflection, and it raised Len’s hackles, because it felt judging and superior.

Leonard had to take a breath, and remind himself why he was here. What he was doing. Why Spock was not the bad guy.

Suddenly, Len was feeling tired.

“Can I come in?” Len regretted it almost as soon as it left him mouth, because he guessed that Spock was going to say something obvious about him already being in the room. If that happened, Len didn’t know if he’d be able to swallow a retort, then they’d be at it again.

But...Spock surprised him. Spock’s lips slightly pursed, as if biting off a comment, and he nodded, allowing Len greater ingress into his domain. “Please.”

Len couldn’t sit down for some reason, probably something to do with already being too vulnerable, and instead propped himself against the wall on one shoulder, looking at Spock, but not meeting his eyes. “I don’t like being a cliche.”

“Excuse me?”

“I had it all planned out-- what I was going to say. How I was going to apologize. But now that I’m here I can’t remember most of it. No big loss. It was trite anyway.” Len gave a slow nod. “That’s such a cliche.”

“Is this an apology?”

“I was raised by firecrackers.” Len caught the twitch of Spock’s fingers around a small pinlight and realized that he was probably as uncomfortable as Len was. Oddly human. Oddly comforting, that he could be so thrown by a non sequitur.

“I do not see what your--”

“I’m getting there. Can’t hurry a southerner and his story.” Spock looked like he was going to speak again, argue the point, but Len held up a hand to stop the question he knew was coming. “There is a point to this. I promise.”

“Proceed.”

“Firecrackers. My family. My father, he had an opinion about everything. The whole family is like that. Strident and emotional. Hot headed, you understand.” When Spock nodded, he continued. “But good people.”

Len looked at his hands, evaluating the cuticles and frowning at one ragged edge that would have to be smoothed. “Maybe you know. Some humans are more empathic than others, not quite psi null. McCoys, they can’t not help-- doctors, the whole lot of ‘em-- but they take on extra hurt in the process.”

“I see.”

Leonard snorted, but didn’t challenge him on it. “I used to be better at this. Divorcing myself from my work, separating  Leonard McCoy and Doctor McCoy. But I hit a rough patch not too long ago, and I’ve been cobbling myself back together in bits and pieces.”

Rough patch was putting it mildly. He’d been out of his gourd. “I’m not very good at it.”

That’s when it began to get uncomfortable. Hands tightened till he could feel the crack of a knuckle. “This entire...” What should he call it, anyway? Debacle? Clusterfuck? Culling? He couldn’t think of a way to describe it to someone who had just been the focus of genocide. “It hurts. I couldn’t do enough. I wasn’t enough, and then, when I saw what happened to Jim. It was Jim.” Len took a deep breath to brace himself. “I’m sorry Spock. I was looking for someone to be mad at, and for some damn  reason I focused on the one person I shouldn’t have.” He hung his head, looking for his courage...and finding it. He carefully arranged the fingers of his right hand in a Vulcan salute and raised it towards Spock, hoping like hell that it would be taken as it was meant. “I grieve with thee.”

There was a tense moment before Spock spoke. “Doctor McCoy.” Len looked up, and Spock’s eyes were round. He hadn’t cracked his mask, but his face looked softer around the edges, less stern. But still somber.

“I am sorry,” Sorry didn’t cut it, but Len repeated it with Baptist sincerity anyway.

Spock stood, placing his hands behind his back. He contemplated his desktop for a short time before looking up again. “I thank thee.” He stopped, but his face looked like it was cycling through a number of thoughts, and Len didn’t really want to remain to hear them, already uncomfortable with Spock’s ready forgiveness.

He straightened his spine so he could make his exit, but Spock put up a thin palm and stayed him.

“I would have you know.” Spock looked slightly pained at this, but kept on. “My mother was a firecracker as well.”

***

Engineering was hemorrhaging ensigns at a steady rate as they dealt with keeping the jerry-rigged machinery together. They were doing a hell of a job, but as soon as Leonard released them back into the wild, it seemed like two more took their place. Hand injuries were common-- plasma accidents, lacerations-- and then there was the current dumbass of the moment, the one who thought micro-welding without a sensitive dichroic shield for three hours was a good idea. Made Leonard’s brain hurt.

He’d hand the man over to an ophthalmologist to get his eyes checked out. He could do the procedure, but not without smacking the guy in the back of his head till he disgorged the stupid he must’ve eaten for breakfast. The guy had a painful UV burn from hell too, to top it all off. Len thought about leaving that treatment till last, hoping he’d learn his lesson with some tough love, but couldn’t bring himself to do it. Instead, he broke out the sensor jelly to slather on with gentle hands. It would help the B.R. unit do its job, reconstructing the burnt skin. Luckily, the dumbass was in much better shape than Jim had been when he’d undergone the procedure back at the academy.

He’d been trying to not think about Jim, but as he finished up with the jelly, and applied the slurping suction of the bioskin, he couldn’t keep Jim out of his head. Not that he was able to duck the inevitable anyway. He’d have to detail this current idiocy in a report to the captain.

When he’d removed the slimy gloves and tossed ‘em into the ‘cycler, he got down to the nitty-gritty of his paperwork. As much as he hated to piss on a person’s parade, he put it in writing that the ensign should be sent back to the academy for at least another semester. It boiled down to “his cornbread ain’t done.” And when he wrote that, he smiled a quick smile, thinking about Jim’s probable reaction to his Mississippi bullshit, and just as quickly the smile morphed into a scowl.

It had been a damn lifetime of not talking to Jim-- but actually only a week since his own meltdown. He submitted minimal reports and other terse nitpicky paperwork that needed validation and Jim’s replies were choppy and impersonal in that harried I-can’t-deal-with-this-right-now way, and the entire exchange left a bad taste in his mouth because passive aggressive wasn’t how they did things.

There’d only been a few uncomfortable nods here and there in the hallway before he turned tail, his spine still yellowing every time they’d come even close to contact, averted eyes and everything, because Len was a chicken heart. He was feeling sorry for himself, but he also felt sorry for Jim, and caught himself wondering, more than once, about how well he was faring.

Was he eating? Still angry?

Crappy as the long shifts and crew idiocy were-- the laundry schedule, the food, the goddamn peanut butter-- even worse was the fact that every day brought him closer to some kind of a reckoning, as if docking the ship was D-day for his emotional well-being.

God. He didn’t know what to say. Couldn’t say it here anyway, with no time and no privacy. Couldn’t even figure out what Jim wanted from him, if he wanted anything from him after what had been said and done. He saw Jim and ached to speak with him, but he also feared the outcome of that talk, because there was no telling what sort of conclusions Jim had reached. It was one thing for Jim to know, academically, that Len was an asshole. It was another for him to get a wet smack with the truth of it.

Len was stuck in a miniature hell of his own making now, but it seemed like a smaller, less bureaucratic evil than the fresh one waiting for him on Earth.

Christ. This is what it had come to. Even the mention of his home planet was making him twitch.

He had decisions to make, and he had to make them without much data. He never thought he’d be envious of a Vulcan, let alone Spock, but for a brief moment he imagined being a touch telepath, so he wouldn’t have to worry about what someone else might be feeling. Must be security, knowing how craptacular things were without talking about feelings. He was already well acquainted with his own feelings, and right now, shame was at the top of the list.

So he’d just go with what he’d been taught.

Begin as you mean to go. His momma had raised him right. Would have told him to hike up his big britches and carry on, minding his P’s and Q’s.

The conversation with Spock was a good start. He’d have to work his way up to the big ones.

***

To his surprise, it wasn’t all bad. Once the adrenaline from their triumph had run its course, things became grim, yes. There weren’t any rose gardens, but a few bright spots popped up to lighten the drudgery.

“What the hell?” Len was nearly bowled over by a perky girl with a wide smile. Carrying a...a loofah on a stick, like some tribal totem.

“Sir?” A passing ensign followed his line of sight and gained a look of comprehension. “Oh. The prize.”

“What prize?”

“It’s the big one, sir. Captain’s water ration.”

“For what?”

“Ah, job well done. The big one is the water ration. Smaller ones are things like candy. Things people stashed. Um...first dibs on food in the mess. Sir.”

“Huh.” Leave it to Jim to cobble a quick fix for the lingering morale problem. He didn’t know where Jim was bedding down, but he was damn sure it wasn’t the captain’s quarters.

“The Captain said that he preferred sonics anyway.” The ensign sounded dubious, which meant the kid probably had more than two brain cells to rub together. Leonard snorted when he heard that, cringing internally at not being able to call the stupid beautiful bastard on his lie. Jim was a hedonist of the first order that who used hot water over sonics anytime it was offered.

But after several days of witnessing the silly walk of loofah triumph, its effect on the crew was obvious. Every day during alpha shift someone was chosen by Spock to negate any accusations of captain’s favorite. And everyday you could see someone heading to the captain’s shower with the stupid loofah and a wide, smug grin, almost as smug as the one Jim wore at his “yeah, I’m the greatest” best.

Leonard himself was chosen after a particularly brutal day treating six burn victims. He didn’t take it, insisting that it go to someone who needed it more, but it still made him warm up a little, because he figured it was Spock’s way of saying he was forgiven.

But not every bright spot he found was Jim’s doing, at least not obviously.

The mess crew administered an unofficial survey then talked amongst themselves. The crew agreed to take a hit during breakfast for the sake of having a treat, and with culinary ingenuity that was every bit as impressive as Scotty’s quick fixes, they had honest to god cake. Twice in a week. The frosting was suspiciously pink, but he wouldn’t quibble over the color when it was cake.

Sometime later, after the days had run together and all he knew was that they had passed the median toward the home stretch-- that evening (morning? he didn’t even know anymore on this raggedy-ass upside-down tin can), before gamma, he went to the mess for coffee and some company that wasn’t directly subordinate to him, drugged up or in pain. Probably a common goal, because there was more crew lingering than he would have guessed at. The lights were dim--to conserve energy and mimic night, and the conversation was mellow. If he squinted to blur his vision, he could almost convince himself that he was somewhere far removed from space.

It was probably one of those congruencies of circumstance that could never be duplicated on purpose, but it somehow seemed inevitable when Uhura started to sing, a bare whisper at first, but gaining strength as everyone everybody around her tuned in.

It was something slow like a southern river, a jazzy tune he recognized like a handful of older songs-- bluesy ballads and Celtic laments, something everyone could hum under their breath-- until another voice joined hers in the chorus, an alto married to her soprano, then a tenor, then another soprano. Soon everybody was singing, regardless of vocal talent. Words about love and pining and hope, moon and June stuff, stuff that should have been depressing, but somehow it wasn’t. A little seed of unity and brotherhood that made Leonard forget, just for a while, about anger or the past-- he added his own gruff voice to the mix.

When Nyota hit the final note, it didn’t break the bubble of well-being that had shrouded them, but it put a period on the evening, and everyone drifted off in ones and twos, not speaking for fear of breaking the spell. It had been so dreamlike that the next morning he wasn’t quite sure if it had actually happened. No one spoke of it, but there were looks exchanged by strangers, acknowledging that they too shared in the experience, been part of something good.

It wasn’t quite Casablanca, but it had been something.

The Trip-- and it would always be called The Trip-- was bad, but it could have been worse. But even the bright spots that made the time seem precious seemed to pale next to the solidity of Jupiter station as it filled the view screens for the first time.  He’d avoided the viewports like he avoided parasites and plague, but he still found himself cramming into the already bursting observation deck to get a look at the gas giant coming closer and closer, filling the black void with color, light skimming over the station hull as it torqued to reveal an empty bay. The entire ship seemed to exhale in relief when the ship clicked into dock courtesy of a wonky inertial dampener, and they felt each hydraulic clasp drive into place, a series of six ship-wide tremors that said home.

Eagerness and anxiety were both heavy in the air as everyone rushed about tending to last minute ship debarkation duties. There was happiness that they were back, only hours away from loved ones and celebrations. Trepidation, because Starfleet had not yet communicated how the debriefs were going to occur, nor how the press should be handled. Worry, because everyone knew that Jim had practically stowed away and Leonard had helped him do it.

No one knew what was going to happen, least of all Jim and Len. And Len would be the first one to point out that aboard ship how the captain and CMO felt was usually how the rest of the ship felt, too.

So what if he had the jitters? If he wanted to see Jo so much his chest ached?  If he was giving himself a hernia with the what-ifs and what-nows and hoo-boys?  Everyone else had them too. Trickle-down psychosis, with him at the top doing the pissing.

He wasn’t proud of it, but you couldn’t pretend away that kind of thing.

Sickbay Two was almost finished. The working equipment was wrapped in plastic sheeting and marked, placed against one clear wall. The items needing repair were marked with blue tape, and a tag listed what had to be fixed. The red tagged items had already been sent to engineering to be stripped for usable parts, recycling and toxic disposal.

Drugs, locked up.

Surfaces, biocleansed.

Medical staff, thanked wholeheartedly for putting up with his shit.

It had been a rough trip, and a rough mission, but as Leonard looked around the sickbay, so sealed and silent, he couldn’t help but feel a little pang.

For however short a time he’d been CMO, it didn’t feel long enough.

He’d been scared. Good lord, he’d been scared. But he’d been necessary to a lot of folk too, people who thanked him later and didn’t mind getting a grunt in response. Real work, with no foolin’ around. Despite the fear and uncertainty, despite the mess of unresolved shit between him and Jim, it’d been good. Amazing really. Almost addictive. Jim obviously didn’t know shit about real adrenaline, because if he had he would have been med track instead.

He’d gotten to be a doctor -- in a way that never seemed to materialize in a clinic or hospital.

And that was the bitch of it.

Fear and Jim aside, this trip had been far, far too short. Because for a very small while there, it had seemed like he belonged.

***

Most everyone was off the ship now, taken planetside via shuttle craft. Only a handful of senior bridge crew remained, and they were now filtering into the transporter room. Upon docking they had finally learned they were to beam directly into the Admiralty offices, directly into debrief.

He could have kicked himself, for not considering that. He’d been avoiding Jim, putting off their talk till they were on solid ground, but now he was filled with anxiety. The debrief could last forever, and there was no guaranteed good outcome-- not for any of them. Who knew when he’d actually get to talk to Jim? Len didn’t think he could stand to leave without some sort of ...something.

Encouragement. Closure. Something that said there was still a bit of them left.

Nervous as hell, but he didn’t look like the only one floating that boat.

It was a somber thing. Each of them, in their own way, bracing for the possibility that they might never see the inside of a ‘fleet ship again. Each, again, hopeful that their contributions outweighed their failures.

Chekov and Sulu stepped up to the platform, both trying to look hard edged and confident, and both looking a bit sheepish instead. Uhura and Spock followed, with nods of approval instead of handshakes. The four then turned to Leonard, waiting for him to step onto the pad,  but he shook his head.

“Y’all go ahead. I’m gonna wait for Jim.”

“It’s been a pleasure working with you, Doctor.” Uhura, ever the diplomat. Chekov and Sulu smiled in agreement.

He couldn’t help but smile at the entire postcard. “No it hasn’t. But thanks all the same. I’ll see you around.”

And in a bend of light, they were gone.

Leonard found a place to lean while he waited. Scotty was manning the controls, and though usually a talker, he was also damned perceptive. He kept silent as he calibrated something on a haptic screen, only occasionally looking up to check on Len. If-- when this was over, and Leonard had the good fortune to be stationed on a ship with Scotty, he’d make an effort to become friends. Scotty had been amazing getting the sickbay equipment online, and understanding when Len overloaded the already taxed machines with even more patients. And just now, he’d shown something deeper, close to understanding. It wasn’t every day you found someone who understood the value of silence.

At least, he hoped it was understanding. He had no idea how long Scotty had been chained to that ice rock.  It might not be understanding-- just habit-- poor bastard.

And then...Jim was there.

“Hey.”

“Hey.” Jim was slightly guarded, but at least it wasn’t rejection. He looked expectant, and Len had to stop himself from shuffling his feet in the guilty way that garnered him headslaps when he was a kid.

“I...uh.” Brilliant sally, McCoy. Just brilliant.

“Yeah.”

“Can I go first? I really want to get this out.” Been festering inside him for too long.

“You don’t need--”

“Yes. I do.” Leonard scowled, which had the opposite of its intended effect and made Jim smile. “And you need it too.”

“I know what I need.” Jim had said it before, but this was the first time Leonard believed him. He didn’t know quite why. Jim’s confidence? But Jim always looked confident. The tone of his voice? Didn’t mean squat. Jim finally looked at home in his own head, but Len couldn’t tell how he knew that. Doubted Jim could, either.

“I know that. And that’s the point,” Leonard said.

“Look, I said some things that--”

“Were spot on. And I need to apologize. Because I said a lot of bullshit. And I only meant half of it, and I’m working on the other half that I did, because it’s wrong, and I’m sorry.” Christ, that was long and choppy and made him sound like ten kinds of moron, but the words that needed saying weren’t coming out properly strung together.

“Don’t apologize.” Jim cocked his head to the side, slight concern and something like worry flirting for a moment as he brought up a hand to Leonard’s arm. The squeeze was brief and the hand pulled back too soon. Tentative, unsure, and that told Len more than anything else that this thing needed to be resolved soon, because Jim should never have to worry about how that kind of touch, any touch, was received.

“I just don’t want you angry at me. Hell, I’m angry at me. I didn’t realize how much of a jackass I’d become until I was--”

“I’m not mad at you.”

Leonard just rolled his eyes and harrumphed.

“I’m not. I haven’t been avoiding you because I’m angry.” Jim glared at his incredulous what-the-fuck-man face. “I didn’t want to pressure you. I wanted to give you time to think. And I’m sorry, too.” He didn’t, wouldn’t say he’d been too harsh, too captainy. Jim didn’t really lie to Leonard, and he wasn’t going to start now. He hadn’t even been overly harsh. Len had been harsh enough on himself, and Jim already knew that.

“I know. I’m a mess, Jim.”

“Not anymore.” Jim said it with a quiet certainty. It was a dangerous man that could gut someone with three words. Submersed in relief. Removal of tension that was so abrupt, the pleasure of its lifting was almost orgasmic. Featherlight. Weightless, as Jim let him off the hook, no longer dangling.

He was grateful to Jim and proud of him all at once. Jim had grown up so much-- was more of an adult than Len. “How do you figure that?”

“You know when a scab gets to the itchy healing stage, and it’s worse than the initial wound?”

“Yeah.”

“This is your itchy healing stage.”

Relief, of a different sort, that almost made him grin. This was more like them, dorky and dumb when left to their own devices. “Your metaphors. Horrible.”

“It’s not like I’m a writer, and you aren’t changing the subject.” Jim scowled again, but his lips were quirked up. “Decisions-- I want you to know what you’re taking on before you actually do it. I want you to make the choices you do because you want them, not because I just happen to be there. I’m not going to tip the scale for you.”

“And I appreciate it. But, Jim. They aren’t just my choices. Not anymore.” Standing on a cliff and stepping off. Taking that kind of plunge couldn’t compare to this. He was admitting a lot. Too much, too much, some part of him was yelling, a little voice that sounded like Joce at the very end.

“Is that so?” Jim must be fucking with him, with that flat tone and flat face that didn’t tell him a thing.

“Yeah.” He’d said it. He’d meant it. He was sticking to it.

“I dunno, Bones. I think they are your choices. I think that you need to own these, think good and hard about them. On your own. I don’t want questions later, no room for error. You know what I’m like. All of it: the good, the bad, the even worse. And you had better know your own self after all this.” A slow curl invaded Jim’s lips, twisting at one end. “Any choices after this? You can negotiate.” The curl became a smirk; a raised eyebrow, an innuendo all on its own.

“A choice, huh?”

“Several of them. I’ve talked to Pike, too, you know.”  

Wasn’t that comforting. Leonard took a moment for himself, shaking his head in thought. Scotty was doing a damn fine job pretending to be absorbed in some algorithm that was probably as boring to him as an icicle. Could probably feel the tension between them, enough to give him a good idea about what was what. Len wasn’t ashamed of this, but he was glad that major revelations were being tabled until they were alone.

“And what if I choose wrong?” He hoped like hell he didn’t sound as nervous as he felt, but the gentling of Jim’s face told him all he needed to know.

“See, that’s where this is awesome. I believe in you. And you can’t go wrong. Because you’ll be doing what’s right for you.” Jim stepped up to the platform, waiting for Leonard to do the same. “Don’t worry about what I want, Bones. I’ll be okay. No matter what.”  

And the future shimmered.

***

He hated Komack with the intensity of a hundred colliding suns.

“Lieutenant Commander McCoy, you do realize that you violated Starfleet Code 876.4, which states that...”

“Lieutenant Commander McCoy, when you smuggled, yes, smuggled, cadet Kirk onboard that...”

“Would you say that you benefited from CMO Puri’s death, Lieutenant Commander?”

The initial debrief was just as brutal as he’d imagined. What he hadn’t considered was that there would be several rounds. He’d been kept in closed conference for hours as they took his statements, admirals sitting stony faced across from him, giving nothing away as he told what he knew. He probably wasn’t as politic as he should have been, but he was tired and cranky and worried about everyone else, and it’s not like they had been there and would they please just stuff it?

Uniformed goatfuckers couldn’t even give him a goddamned candy bar to get his blood sugar up, or a coffee to keep him from killing them, so as far as he was concerned, they were asking for his unedited, unvarnished opinion.

Sackless shit-eating toss-up kneebiters.

He hadn’t actually said that, but it was a near thing.

He had finally been released, so he could eat and shower and rest or whatever it was people did to celebrate being back on terra firma, but he was to report back to the admiralty at 1330 the next day.

Probably needed to corroborate everyone’s stories, figure out what details they wanted, and plan how best to nail him to a wall.  

He’d make sure to bring a Snickers.

He didn’t see Jim or any of the other bridge crew as he was leaving, and none of them were responding to their comms, so he supposed they were still being grilled. There were several messages from his ex-wife, but she already knew he was alive, and they’d keep till the morning. He wanted to talk to Jojo so bad, but he knew he had to be at full cognitive function to deal with her momma beforehand. Which meant rest and a real southern breakfast. Grits! He’d blow Komack for grits and hot sauce.

He mooched down the steps of AdCom, figuring that he’d go back to his room and sack out for a while before trying the staff comms again. He simmered about the interrogation for all of five minutes before reality crept into his peripheral vision.

Everything was really quiet. That’s what initially made him look up from his feet. There were a few cadets rushing around, but only a handful. Steps slowed, then stopped, and he stood in place, turning for a 360 panorama. Stretches of vast lawn with only a few groups-- smaller groupings of quiet people. Too quiet, too few. Buildings that had once vented a steady stream of cadets instead looked solemn, and sad-- the Academy, once a lady, now a palimpsest. The old writing scraped away, revealing the empty vellum underneath. And yes, he was anthropomorphizing a bunch of buildings, and Jim would laugh at him for mixing his metaphors, but almost anyone there probably felt the same. The ‘fleet grounds weren’t just a school.

It was one thing to know something intellectually, and quite another to be hit with the full brunt of hard fact.

Hushed words instead of vibrant voices-- whispers like a requiem. Library manners filling the whole of its echoic walls, more powerful than a room of wailing mourners.

It was awful.

The first two years’ cadets were still here, of course, but only about half the junior class had stayed behind. Those that had enough credits, the better students, had been aboard ships. Of the senior class, fewer than 20% survived.

So.

No.

He wasn’t going to get mad over a series of briefings. Not anymore. Not when the alternative could be so much worse.

The abrupt change of direction happened almost without conscious thought. He was tired and wanted a real bed, but he didn’t think he’d be able to rest without checking in to SFM. The long route added a few minutes to the walk, but the shorter trip would take him past the Remembrance Day memorial, and he didn’t want to look at it right now. It’d been put in place to commemorate a long-ago battle, but it had become a symbol to remember the fallen, a family holding hands, staring at the sky. He knew there’d be piles of ephemera-- notes, prayers, trinkets and flowers left by people that didn’t know what else to do to find solidarity in their pain. It always happened after a tragedy, and he always had to look away after leaving something of his own.

He’d do it, but not today. Today he wanted to concentrate on the living.

He wouldn’t be able to sleep without some sort of closure to the day.

He must’ve only ever looked at Pike through beer goggles or rage-colored glasses. That was his first thought, his first shock. Once those glasses were forcibly removed he was able to see the man.

Before, he’d been an abstract idea that held authority over him, or a boogeyman that could chew Jim up and spit him out. A hardass, a soldier. Or a caricature of the older prof having it on with his student. Fucking remote. Now, knowing what Pike was like, and reconciling that with the real person...

“Doctor McCoy.”

Pike had been given a private bed in one of the swankier rooms that was decorated like a moderate hotel instead of washed in bland clinical green. There were plenty of gifts, too, tasteful potted plants that must have been from bosses and peers, and obnoxious silver balloons, get-well holos and stuffed monstrosities that could only come from family or cadets.

Leonard preferred the garish stuff. It was cheerful in the way of homespun Christmas trees.

Intelligent foam cradled Pike and the apparatus feeding into his neck, morphing to the shape of his body as he moved. He was resting at fifteen degrees when Len entered the room, but it adjusted to a thirty percent incline when he started to strain upwards, reading his kinetic movement.

Noticing where Len was looking, Pike waved a hand towards the goodwill in the corner. “Aunts. Uncles. Cousins. My brother. Some nieces and nephews.”

“Nice.” And it was nice, knowing that not everybody had as fucked a family relationship as he did.

“Not remotely. The nice stuff is from the admiralty. And from the ass kissers.” Pike’s face was wry, but attempting a smile. “I like the fun stuff better.”

“The silver fox was a nice touch. Jim?”

“I think so.”

“Must’ve called ahead. He’s still in debrief-- probably won’t cut him loose for hours.” Len grimaced at the thought.

“Don’t worry about it. He’s tritanium.”

“M’not worried about him.”

“You?” Pike’s voice was laughing disbelief.

Len shook his head, giving Pike a pointed look, which made Pike snort before responding. “Don’t worry about me. I’m sure you looked at my charts. The polymer completely bonded to the toxin. We’re just waiting on removal.”

“Waiting on me, you mean.”

“If you want to do it.”

Leonard sighed, bringing a hand up to rub at the back of his neck as he looked down. Jim had mentioned his choices, but hadn’t spelled them out, because they weren’t simple, like whether or not to perform a surgery. These were existential choices based on his own autology. Could he give Jim the autonomy he needed? It wasn’t that he didn’t trust Jim-- he had to work on trusting himself, and he couldn’t do that if he couldn’t hold himself to his own high standards. And holding out for favors had no part in that. Did he want to do it? Yes. But...

“Not like this.”

He looked up in time to catch Pike’s sudden look of consternation. Upset? There was a lot going on there, and Leonard didn’t understand most of it, but he understood enough to backpedal. “I’m going to do it. I came here to say I’m sorry I’m an asshole, and to tell you that I’ll do it.”

Pike’s smile was satisfied, but his iceberg eyes were wary. “But?”

“No buts. I’m going to do it.” Leonard cocked his head, forehead wrinkling as he took the plunge. “And you don’t need to give me any recommendation. I’m not doing this for a recommendation.  You were right. Shesset and Dilori couldn’t find their collective asses with all four hands and a map.” This was his apology, the grand gesture, and Pike was smart enough to know it. Len’s palms were sweaty, and he dearly wanted to rub them dry, but he thought that would give too much away. How scared he was, how regretful.

“What about Jim?”

“What about him?”

Pike raised an eyebrow at that, and it was effective, even if it wasn’t quite in the same class as Leonard’s or Spock’s.

Len colored, but stood his ground. “He has nothing to do with this. You need the best care available-- I am the best care available. I’ve already got a tentative schedule for aftercare and rehab put together, but it depends on how the surgery goes. But don’t think....” Len shook his head, pissed at himself, but trying not to look it. “Don’t think that you owe me anything. I’m a doctor, dammit. This is who I am.” If anything, he owed Pike.

Pike relaxed all over, and it wasn’t until then that Len realized how tense the man had been. Now...now he looked like a cat licking cream. The abrupt change was startling, and too damned revealing. Pike’s face lit up like a flare. Len had expected him to be depressed over his losses, but he was still himself-- powerful, triumphantly alpha.

When Pike spoke, he practically crowed. “I knew you’d be a great CMO.”

“I’m not CMO material. I think we established that.” It was spoken a little harsher than Len had meant, because this was fucking disturbing, and what the hell was the man thinking, smiling like that? He wasn’t exactly like Jim, but he was so similar that Len felt a familiar tugging in his chest, a stutter of breath in his throat.

“And apparently, I’m not captain material. But maybe I can be admiral material.”  

“You’re a great captain.”

“Oh yeah? Then why don’t you trust in my choice of CMO?”

“I told you--”

“I heard you, too. And despite what you think--”

Len opened his mouth to argue, but was cut off by Pike.

“Despite what I told you, I’m not giving you the rec because of my vertebrae.”

“But--”

“We won’t know for sure until we get the aerospace architectural engineer’s survey, but I don’t think there is any way I’m getting the ship back. But even if I still had the Enterprise, I’d want you. There are plenty of doctors here that have skills, experience, accolades.” Pike waved his hand in dismissal. “The ‘fleet is full of that. But what I want... for myself, for Jim...” His eyes crinkled-- charming, which Len hated. “...Is someone with heart. You don’t give up, even when it’s in your best interest-- people, not probabilities. You don’t sugarcoat,  even when things are hard. You care-- even when it kills you. You care so much, you’re willing to forgo the recommendation of a lifetime, because it’s interfered with your moral compass. I picked Jim because of what Starfleet’s lost. I’m picking you for the same reason.”

“You’re reading too much into it.”  He turned to the familiar scowl, to mask his shock, wariness, the small core of pleasure at the genuine compliment. He’d never done this gracefully, and cursed the way he came off sullen and embarrassed. Probably blushing.

“I don’t think I am. And I want that compass. Since I can’t have it for myself, I think I’ll give Jim the option. Let him put up with you. Poor bugger.”

“But-”

“Tomorrow good for you? 1200-ish?”

And Len figured he wasn’t quite as immovable as he had thought, because surrender seemed to be the only option. He sighed. “I’ve got a debrief.”

“You had a debrief. Now you’ve got me.”

“How?”

“I called Archer. What can I say? He likes me.”

“No. I meant, how did you know I’d say yes?”

“Because. I think I finally have you figured out.”

Leonard  was used to seeing Pike on an angry tear, or behind a desk, or loopy with a pain shunt. This new Pike didn’t just have a lot in common with Jim. He seemed to be channeling a lot of Leonard too.  And Len knew when it was easiest to just give in and go with it. “Bastard.” He sounded resigned, even to his own ears.

“Prick.” Pike flashed a smile.

***

“It was a good thing you did here.” Jim leaned against the wall next to the door of the med lounge, looking collected in his blacks and a cadet’s jacket. Len didn’t ask, but he assumed that Jim was either in limbo or wanted the anonymity of the cadet uniform over the gold of his field promotion.

"Gotta admire a man that can blackmail me and still make it one of the nicest things anyone has ever done for me." Selecting him to perform the surgery, recommending him for CMO, talking sense to him-- pick one.

Leonard passed his gloved hands through the sonic unit before stripping the gloves, peeling away the delicate sensors with deliberate care.

Pike was in recovery after three hours in the surgical enclosure. The contact work had been performed by nanos and sonics, but the virtual direction was all Leonard. The guided nanos entered the body via hypospray, and were positioned as receivers for the sonics, which broke up the polymer. Once it was reduced to small particulate matter, he flushed it along with the absorbed toxin-- no further damage. It sounded easier than it actually was; a doctor had to have excellent spatial awareness and medical intuition. One wrong move...

“I watched part of it.”

“Dead boring. And you weren’t supposed to have access.” Leonard could feel a slight blush forming due to Jim’s innocent voyeurism. It was a strange procedure to watch, even for those familiar with it. Med gloves manipulating the holo projection to place the microscopic nanos, movement so fluid it wouldn’t look out of place with a floreo or lotus hand position in a belly dance.

“Funny thing. Everyone’s being super nice to me. Com codes. More pies.” He paused for effect, because he was a dramatic SOB. “Access.”

Leonard grunted at that as he removed his scrub top, leaving the black undershirt behind. He tossed it aside in favor of a long-sleeved knit in an indeterminate green, worn thin and soft. But getting dressed seemed to sap something out of him, so he boosted himself up onto a metal table next to the wall.

Jim seemed to expect something from him, so he assembled his thoughts, kicking his feet while his hands clutched the edge of the steel top. It took a moment or two-- he hadn’t expected Jim here, or now, but he was finally able to find words.

“I’m sorry.”

“I know. You said.”

“Not just about that. I did what you asked, and thought about things. But not just Pike, and me being a bastard. Or the shitshow with Spock.” Leonard didn’t look up yet-- wasn’t confident enough to look at Jim and get it all said. “You didn’t say it in so many words.”

“I didn’t have to.”

“No.” Leonard nodded, and felt a little ball of gratitude well in his throat. “I thought about us; how we are. And a lot of it’s good.” He could feel Jim’s agreement, even if he couldn’t see it. “But a lot-- well. If I was dealing with your pain, it meant I had no time for my own, and I was comfortable with that.”

“Bones.”

“I’ve come to terms with it. There’s no ownership here. You don’t need me. And I don’t need you. Not like I thought I did two weeks ago.”

The floor had a fascinating Greek key pattern that was completely at odds with the Neu Bauhaus interior of the surgical wing, and Leonard couldn’t take his eyes off it. Even so, he knew Jim was retreating into his shell. Didn’t need to look at him to sense that. It was almost a taste in the air. “I don’t need you with me.”

And Jim’s retreat was full on thrusters, which was stupid, but that was Jim all over, and Leonard was supposed to be the one to overreact, so he looked up, and goddamn...

“Jim, I don’t need you, but that doesn’t change the fact that I want you like crazy. You’re my best friend, and that’ll never change. If you’re a hotshot captain and I’m a podunk M.D. in Shitsville, Virginia, I’ll still want you. You decide to become a beach bum and play guitars at people, I’ll want you then, too.”

Jim’s eyes, guarded before, widened a bit in surprise, but the grin Leonard was expecting never materialized. Still, Leonard soldiered on, before he lost his nerve. “You’re your own man. You may have needed me at one time, but that’s over with-- has been for a long while. I thought we were always equal, but I was so worried about you growing up that I forgot to get on with the growing up myself. I forgot to trust you, and we both paid for it. But I want that. Even scales-- I want that like blazes.” He petered off, not quite sure how to finish; never having gotten that far in his own head. “And that’s all I have.”

He was all out of words. And if the ones he had used weren’t good enough...

He cleared his throat, then looked back down at the floor as Jim moved, first to his side, then boosting himself up to the table to sit next to Len, thighs brushing.

“I’m not a coward.”

It wasn’t what Len was expecting, and he couldn’t help but respond. “No one said-“

“I’m not. But let me get through this. Alright?”

Leonard was confused, but nodded at Jim to continue.

“I’m kind of angry with Old Spock. He did this thing, a mind meld.” Jim batted his arm when Len stretched towards a tricorder and groused about Vulcan voodoo mind whammies. He removed the tricorder from Len’s reach and pulled him by the hand, to keep him from hopping off the table. Leonard would have protested, but he could sense how serious Jim was, despite the levity in his voice.

“I saw the other me. That wasn’t so bad. Yeah, he had a father, but he had a lot of the other baggage too, so I didn’t feel too bad. It made a big difference though, skewed things just enough. Different histories. Different interests. I like Go and chess bores me.”

“But you play it.”

“Pike liked it. Doesn’t mean it gets my nipples hard.  I’m well-read in history, but not married to it. We both love Shakespeare, but he didn't have my thing for twentieth century lit or music. I hate fucking antiques. ”

Leonard grimaced as he remembered the particular way that came about. He’d heard about the car in more than one drunken ramble.

“That Jim died alone, which was just stupid, because he was surrounded by people who loved him. I’m not that Jim and never will be. Nature versus nurture. Old Spock--he and Old Jim, he wanted to give me a chance to be like them. To be with Spock, which is kind of weird. I’m not the best judge of healthy relationships, but it was a pretty messed up dynamic-- I mean, Spock tried to erase his feelings completely in a Vulcan ritual, even though they had a thing. You think I’m fucked up? Try living in his head. Spock 2.0 told Uhura that she had ‘optimal interpersonal ergonomics’.”

Leonard couldn’t stop his lip from curling in humor, but that didn’t change the fact that this was dead serious. Cards on the table, everything out there. For Jim to be this open and honest about, well, everything, was unprecedented.

“He said it would be the defining friendship of my life.” Jim laughed. “I think Old Spock is deluding himself. No matter what kind of Vulcan voodoo he does, we aren’t those people. That Jim still had brown eyes, Bones. Brown eyes, but he had been there. Tarsus.” The word had its own gravity.  “Even the things that are the same, they kind of aren’t.”

“I figured that. I’m not a damn idiot Vulcan. I’ll take common sense over logic any day.”

“ And,” Jim continued, as if he hadn’t been interrupted, “I think old Spock is just a bit of a romantic, but I don’t believe in soulmates. Not his definition anyway.” He bumped Leonard’s shoulder with his own.  “In his universe we didn’t meet for another eight years or so.” Jim shook his head, as if that was hard to wrap his brain around.

“I don’t think a soulmate is someone you are destined for. I don’t believe in that kind of fate, universe repairing itself or not. I think a soulmate is someone who helps you become a better person, fills up the empty spaces, helps you fulfill your potential. I think there are several chances at a soulmate if you keep your mind open and it’s the right time.” He was playing with the edge of his sleeve where the stripes should go, very determined not to look up.

“Maybe Spock could have been that for me, but not anymore-- his window never opened. Maybe he was a soulmate in that universe...” Jim did look up this time, eyes naked. “But only because I hadn’t met you first.”

Leonard could feel himself turning red, mouth gaping. What could you say to something like that? “Christ, Jim.”

“I know I’m still fucked up. I know I sometimes annoy the shit out of you.” Jim shrugged. “I sometimes annoy the shit out of me, too. But I just wanted you to know. The other me pissed around and never said jack shit until it was too late half the time and I don’t want to make the same mistakes. Just because he was a douchebag and a coward doesn’t mean I need to be one. So, now you know.” He looked shifty and nervous, but he didn’t startle like a horse and bolt.

Leonard cleared his throat of a sudden obstruction. “Well.” More throat clearing as Jim took on a look of alarm. Jackass. “I still don’t like ‘em blond. But I guess in your case, I guess- Oof.”

Jim smacked him in the gut, but Len was so pleased with Jim he barely retaliated.  Instead, he laughed. A real one, a deep one, the kind that shook your whole body and made your cheeks ache. “You know what the Gestalt Principles of Perception are?”

“Ship architecture. Engineering stuff.”

“Psychology, too.”

“Yeah.”

“That’s us, Jim. All of it. Common fate: same direction, same velocity. You’re the figure fixed in space, I’m the ground.”

“Sap.”

But Len didn’t care. Jim would just have to get used to it. “Closure...even I can’t perceive our individual elements anymore.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” He couldn’t stop the grin that curled his lips.

Jim snorted, but it was a happy sound. “You’re smiling.”

“People sometimes do that.”

“People. Not you.” And now Jim’s answering smile crept across his face in increasingly brave increments. Relief. “I like it. You should make a habit of it. Scare the kids.”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

He pushed Jim until he was forced to hop off the table, then grabbed at the hem of his cadet reds, pulling it up, forcing Jim to raise his arms as he yanked it off, leaving him in his blacks. He wouldn’t need it where they were going. He tossed it in direction of the recycler unit as Len pushed him again, pointing him at the door. Jim let himself be pushed, then took the initiative and made for the foyer that would release them onto the concrete and grass promenade.

“Drinks?” Jim’s voice was light.

“Yeah.” Len beat him to the door and pushed Jim through before following him down the short stair and into the bright day.

The sun was out. The clouds were fluffy. Birds were singing and it didn’t annoy the piss out of him.

There were fucking flowers.

For the first time in a long time, it felt damn good to be Leonard Horatio McCoy. His arm went around Jim and Jim raised his eyebrow in question. Leonard raised his brow right back. “Buy me a Saurian brandy or five and we can discuss those empty spaces that need fillin’.”

Jim’s answering laughter echoed round the quad.

And the quad, which had been so empty and lonely yesterday, was suddenly filled with life.

 ****

**Chapter 13  
**

 

 

 **  
_"It may be that you are settled in another place, it may be that you are happy, but the one who took your heart wields final power."— Jeanette Winterson_   
**

 

 

They were at a bar that wasn’t one of their usual haunts. He supposed it had something to do with not confronting ghosts of conquests past. It was still a little hole in the wall. Bit of an older crowd, Leonard’s age or older. Polished faux wood and brass. Too dark, and the flicker from the cheesy red solar candles didn’t do much to lighten it up.

For people who didn’t want to be recognized, it was perfect.

“Can I get something for you gentlemen?” The waitress was vaguely phosphorescent, stippling fading in and out like a cuttlefish, with the clipped monotone of someone whose translator was overclocking to keep up. She didn’t even look up when they placed their order for bourbon straight up, and a jack and coke.

There weren’t a whole lot of people, and the ones that were there were cozied up together in a corner just like them. Len was used to seeing morose singles nursing drinks at the bar, but he supposed that survivor’s goodwill had temporarily halted the doom and gloom crowd that he had known so intimately.

“It’s early, Jim. Too early. Stop worrying about it.”

“I know. But...”

“Besides. We’re looking pretty scruffy.”

Jim laughed, and pulled out his chip to transfer credits as the drinks arrived.

The arrival of the Enterprise hadn’t been disseminated in the news yet, but rumor was a bitch, and Jim was still tense with the possibility of being recognized.

The first drink loosened him up a little. Midway through the second, he’d become comfortable. Jim was usually like cryptochrome, with sensors calibrated for trouble and sex instead of color, but there wasn’t enough malice or lust to pierce the mellow atmosphere, so they were left alone. The few looks slanted their way Leonard fielded with a scowl. But it’s no different from what they usually got on a night out, so it seemed like anonymity was assured.

Not that Jim seemed to notice anymore. Jim’s arm was around Leonard, and Jim’s smiles were for Leonard, and he’d never had that much Jim Kirk wattage turned on him at once and he was drunker off that than he was his two, no, three drinks. It was no wonder that they weren’t approached, because it was quite obvious who Jim was with.

“Hey!” Len waved at the waitress, who gave a funny half-nod, half-shake of the head before heading over.

“More of the same?” Same stilted words, but she finally looked at their faces, zeroing in on Jim, and smiled for the first time of the evening, dimpling and revealing sharp canines that were frankly terrifying.

“Uh. Yeah.” Len squeezed Jim’s shoulder as he went rigid under Len’s palm, but waited till the waitress left for the bar before leaning over to whisper. “That wasn’t recognition. She just thought you were sex on a stick.”

“She thought I was lunch.”

“That too. Like a praying mantis, maybe?”

“Ack.”

Len snickered, and when the waitress returned with their latest round and whatever passed for flirtation in her species, Len took out his wallet to transfer credits, giving her a significant look as he tapped the transfer module with his small data wafer, his other hand on Jim’s.

She hurried off, but had posed no real threat to anything but Jim’s enjoyment of the evening.

Jim has to be wanted for more than looks, that much is obvious. Not for one night, no, but for anything longer term, he needed more than someone who finds him pretty, someone who wasn’t impressed by beauty alone. For all the grandiose posturing, the kid isn’t shallow-- Len had seen him chase men and women who were more brains than beauty. Jim knew he was pretty, but he didn’t impress himself with it. Contemptuous of those that didn’t bother to look any deeper, even as he used it to his advantage; even as he relied on their blindness to keep the biggest parts of himself veiled.

He was the human embodiment of the Law of Pragnanz, the principle that states that well-arranged complex objects appear simple to the human eye. Or maybe he was the Law of Closure, the tendency to complete a partially obscured object. People took in the complexity of the man; the disparate elements, small facets, the dynamism, and smoothed him into a simpler shape because it was easy.

Leonard hated easy.

Leonard knew that Jim had liked it that way at one point, but there had also been little reason for anyone to see beyond the show Jim put on. Fame had changed that. Now Jim was a hero with a “mysterious past” and the attention bugged him. It would be impossible to reconcile his accomplishments with the face he was used to presenting the world, but Len was sure he’d bluster his way through it. In a way, Len was happy about it, as if Jim had gotten a do-over, wiping away the last vestiges of the old him, and allowing the real Jim to take his place.

Jim was still Jim to the marrow, but the perception of him was shiny. Sparkly. Brand-spanking new.

A paradigm shift.

They could have gone straight to their room, but he wanted Jim to know that it wasn’t about fucking. It was about being with Jim, enjoying him, and they didn’t need to be naked for that.

“You wanna talk about the debrief?” He was pretty sure what the answer would be.

“No.” Amusement in Jim’s voice.

“Good.”

It must’ve been difficult, much more than Leonard’s, even if Pike had intervened like Leonard suspected. Jim was a piss-poor apologist, so it was safe to say he hadn’t dressed up his actions. Hotheaded, brutal. Brave. Perhaps foolish. All treated with the same mixture of insight and  balls-out bravado. Hopefully his natural charisma on top of his very real ability would carry him through-- in the meantime Len would worry that it wasn’t enough.

Len had been compelled to ask, but that was just manners and Jim could figure that out with his brain tied behind his back. Jim didn’t have to tell him a damn thing, the truth was writ so large on his face. Jim didn’t want the admiralty in bed with them, and Len for damn sure didn’t want them oppressing the atmosphere, so he’d recommended the bar for decompression instead of immediately pinning Jim to a wall with tongue and hands like he’d wanted. They’d put off their holy-shit-I’m-alive celebration for far too long, but it could keep for a few more hours as they snacked on pretzels, drank, and shared small, fleeting touches.

Once the wall-pinning happened, Len didn’t plan to come up for days.

Len kept receiving I-see-what-you-did-there looks over the rim of Jim’s glass, but his blue eyes were smiling and his shoulders were unknotting, so Jim could bite him, it was a good call. By unspoken consensus they were getting mildly drunk, but loose and easy was a good thing-- no, a great thing. So was the slow build up, which might have been giving Len a deferred gratification kink, because he was enjoying the way Jim’s tongue licked the rim of his collins glass, tasting the dots of moisture that gathered. And the way Jim pressed his lips to the glass-- not drinking, just holding there for too long a moment to be anything but deliberate.

This seemed appropriate, somehow. Alcohol and avoidance was how they’d met, how they’d functioned. For years it’d served either as a lubricant between them, making sure they didn’t rub each other the wrong way-- or it’d served as a glue, holding them together when they were too fucking annoyed with each other to not tear each other apart for one more sober moment.

Fitting, that it would help in this too. Not-healthy, no-how, but that’s just how it was.

Leonard put an arm around Jim’s shoulder and squeezed, pulling him into his side with a sly grin.

“You doing okay?” Len’s voice was low, for Jim’s ears only. He left his arm there, but allowed the hand to trail Jim’s arm, feeling the hairs become rampant under his caress as Jim’s eyelids fluttered to half-mast, head tilting back slightly to expose a throat that glowed with the faint traces of sweat.

“I’m great. Fantastic.” Jim teeth worried his lower lip for a moment. “Slightly drunk.”

Not healthy, but he’d given up on ‘physician heal thyself’ a long time ago. He’d had healthy, and look at how that’d turned out. Fucking miserable.

Instead, maybe he’d try happy this time around.

Joce-- she’d always looked so strong and stoic when he’d gone off the rails, quietly putting up with his shit with a sigh and an ‘oh, Leonard’, and he’d quietly resented her for it in turn. Leonard didn’t need quietly supportive. Like most McCoys, he needed a good swift kick in the pants. Someone to argue with him, and tell him when he was being a damn fool. Hell, argue with him period--depth instead of dishwater. Len knew he was a hard man to get along with, intensity that could only be met with equal intensity, otherwise the other partner got run over. Jim or one of the other bridge crew could probably come up with a good physics simile, but Len’d always hated math as a science, and he was a doctor, not a poet.

The truth of the matter was that Len was an all or nothing kind of guy, but Joce wasn’t an all or nothing kind of girl-- they had just been too young to realize it. She wanted soft and steady, boring and beige. And somehow she thought Leonard could be the one to give it to her.

But Jim...he looked at Jim. Admired the tectonics of his body. His perfect profile, small scars, and light stubble. More than that-- the bullheadedness, the vitality, the survivor’s will.

The beauty that sometimes crippled him-- that had nothing to do with his face and everything to do with the core of him.

The stubborn cuss.  

He rested his forehead against the curve of Jim’s neck, closing his eyes and breathing in the musk and the salt and the whiskey, so strong in his nostrils it was almost like he’d stuck out his tongue and drawn it over Jim’s quickening pulse.

One Mississippi. Two Mississippi. Three Mississippi.

All or nothing.

Three years ago it’d felt like he’d chosen the nothing. And it had taken those three years to figure out he’d thought wrong.

Jim turned into him slightly, his breath grazing Len’s temple with a huff, nose nuzzling with a whisper of movement.

Len’s breath hitched in his chest.

“Yeah?” He spoke into Jim’s shoulder, and this time he didn’t stop himself from dragging his lips across the tendon.

Jim answered with a quick intake of air, and a light shudder as Len’s tongue barely touched his earlobe at the end of its journey. “Yeah. Yeah, I think I am.”

***

He should be nervous. This was his second iteration, after all. Should be damn nervous.

Wasn’t.

They didn’t speak at all on the way to the dorm, didn’t touch as they wound their way through the streets, paths and grassy hillocks that led to the med housing. No horror vacui for them. Just comfort, and anticipation like wine held against the roof of the mouth. They didn’t dawdle, but they weren’t running, either. Smiles were plentiful, even if they shied away from too close scrutiny. One touch would lead to two touches would lead to knees scraped threadbare in a dirty alley as tongues touched membrane, touched moist heat, touched heart... god.

They weren’t men intent on a quick, dirty fuck as stress relief. This wasn’t some drunken hellyesnow idea that would curdle in the morning light. This had been in motion ever since they met-- iceberg movement. Continental shift, expansion of the universe-- huge, slow-moving and monumental-- and damn if that didn’t sound grandiose and the definition of asshole, but that was how Leonard felt.  

He’d say epic, but that was more of a Jim thing to say, anyway.

That kind of motion didn’t end with a two-minute against-the-wall rut. Leonard knew that, viscerally; more instinctive than cerebral. Jim... might know that. But even if he didn’t, he soon would.

Jim got to the door before him, but came to a stop without pressing his fingers to the biometric pad. At first Leonard thought he might be balking, but he came up behind Jim, and felt the tension that haloed him like an aura, so tight he was practically vibrating with it. He wasn’t balking...he was about to buckle. Too aroused, too--

The air left his lungs with a whoosh, and before he realized what was happening, he had Jim pressed against the door, hands pinning his shoulders and cock snug against his ass. He breathed in the herbal smell of Jim’s shampoo as he slotted his head on Jim’s shoulder, mouthing at his ear, voice so quiet they could barely hear him over their own harsh breathing.

“God, you smell good. The things I want to do to you.” The bite that followed was light. Lighter than the reaction, which started at Jim’s knees and coursed upwards in a way Len could feel, pressed as he was against him.

“Bones.”

“What do you want, Jimmy?” He’d always had a thing for his partners telling him what they wanted, how they wanted it. He might give it to them, might withhold it to ratchet everything up to unbearable, but he wanted the words. “What do you want me to do to you?”

One hand left Jim’s shoulder, easing down, touch light enough to tickle as he eased under the shirt, finding the smooth warm skin of his side, his abs, ribs, skirting nipple.

“Nice.” Jim hummed, like his body was humming.

“Not an answer.” Rubbing. Rubbing. Nipple plumping. Not pinching, just a smooth stroke on that one bit of pebbled flesh he found so, so sensitive.

“I don’t know.” Jim turned his face away, even as he bucked back into Leonard’s dick. “I always had a game plan. A bunch of scripts for how this kind of thing would go. But I haven’t--” Jim bit off what he was going to say, before deciding he might as well plunge. “I don’t want scripted with you. I don’t want what I’ve already had.”

“You don’t think there’d be a difference between this--” And he did pinch here, making Jim whine high in his throat. “And some formula?”

“No! I know it couldn’t. But I didn’t want...”

“What?”

“I didn’t try to fantasize about you. I didn’t want to put you in one of those scenarios.”

Leonard removed his hand, backing away, giving Jim room to move. “My hero.”

Jim turned around with a scowl that could match Len’s best. “You jackass. This is a completely different rubric.”

“Yup. But if you can still pull words like rubric out of your ass, I’m doing something wrong.” This time, he pressed himself against Jim’s front, and the feel of groin meeting groin made both of them groan. He joined his sweat-damp cheek to Jim’s, stubble meeting stubble. “Gonna fuck you, Jim. It’s gonna be good, and slow, and long-- and you are gonna fucking sing on the end of my cock.”

“Oh god.”

Jim responded to the sound of his voice with a whole body tremor that made Len simmer, just thinking of the possibilities. “You want that, Jimmy?” The grind of his hips, even through layers of fabric, was about to make him lose his mind.

“Yes. Fuck yes.”

“Then open the goddamn door,” Leonard rasped before kissing him.

Jim opened the goddamn door.

“Computer. Lights. Fifty percent.” Jim pulled away just long enough to bark the command before pulling Leonard back to him, mouth swallowing anything Len might have cared to say.

Jim’s mouth. His mouth! So hot, slick with spit, tongue thrusting just like his hips, exploring Len’s mouth, teeth, the softness of his cheek, the ridges of his palate. Jim was good with his mouth. Better. Best. But Leonard was good too, and tried to wrangle Jim back down, back to soft and slow, but the kiss picked up even as Jim tried to climb him, climbing a tree to touch a star, and that was just not how this was going to happen. Not this time.

“Nnnn--” He pulled his lips away, which was harder than it should have been as Jim worried Len’s lower lip between his teeth. “Oh no. That isn't how this is going down. None of that jackrabbit shit tonight.”

“Mmm. But--”

“No buts.” Len pushed Jim back a few inches, then pushed harder, until Jim got with the program and allowed enough room between them to get a full picture. Len’s eyes never faltered in their examination of Jim’s pale blue, even as Len’s shirts came off one after another, the green knit skinned neatly and efficiently. The undershirt, tighter, hotter, peeled off slow and slinky with arms crossed, arms bulging as they tensed and pulled up. The S-curve of his body moving, moving like he’d seen Jim move before, an articulated snake of hard muscle and smooth flesh as the material was pulled over his head to be tossed away. Mirroring to gain positive attention was an old concept, but it worked, if the look on Jim’s face was anything to go by.

Never knew, never imagined blue could burn so hot, but Jim’s eyes were the steam of dry ice as Leonard touched himself, hand starting at his trapezius, down to his external obliques. When Len reached the inguinal ligament, the cut that traced down, down into his slacks, down towards his groin, full and too tight in his scrub trousers, Jim sucked in a breath that sizzled, sparking in the air like ball lightning.  

Len couldn’t resist, tracing one finger over to the fastening of his scrubs, teasing at it before smoothing it back to his hip, then again, and once more until Jim made a sound of frustration somewhere between a growl and a laugh.

Boots toed off. Fastening, opened. Scrubs, hip-checked to the floor. Boxer briefs, black and piped blue to throw his cock into sharp relief, seams aligned to define the hard length, pulsing and hot, eager between his legs. He cupped himself in one hand, balls cradled in his palm, fingers playing at the base of his cock as he gave a soft squeeze. “Ummh.”

He took a step toward Jim, but Jim, counterintuitively, he thought, backed away.

“Christ, Bones. No. Gotta finish this. I have to see it.”

Len groaned again, because he never thought he’d be any sort of exhibitionist, but the idea of Jim watching him, wanting to watch him strip, made his balls firm up under his hand. Hand that moved, flirting with the waistband, then with muscle. Traveling under cotton knit, over pectineous, adductor brevis, longus, magnus. This might be the only time he would curse being a doctor, embracing his calling, because he couldn’t divorce what he knew of emotionless anatomy from what he was doing now. This deserved richer words than the detached clinical jargon he used every day.

It didn’t feel clinical. It felt like poetry, like dance, like humanist triumph.

Cock, not penis, he thought, as he gripped himself in one hand, pulling the fabric over the moist head of his cock with the other. The foreskin was already pulled back over the glans, glistening in the half light as his underwear fell to his ankles to be kicked away. He spread more fluid with his thumb, then repeated the movement when Jim seemed hypnotized by the motion.

Testing a hastily formed hypothesis, he stroked over the slit with his index finger, gathering fluid. He pulled the finger away so slowly that a string of pre-come remained connected, stretching and bobbing until the tension became too great and it popped.

And goddamn, he loved being right, because Jim’s eyes followed that finger as Leonard brought it to his own mouth, swallowing it to the second knuckle before slowly withdrawing it.

“Shit. That’s...”

Len looked at Jim, heavy-lidded-- half with want, and half with get-on-with-it-already-you-moron.

“Shit. Yeah.” And Jim started his own strip, which was more about speed and less about tease, but no less amazing for all that. He was made even paler under the slightly blue tint of the light globes, a stark contrast to the blacks that were being discarded. Skin, delicately pinked in the creases, hollows and crests. Nipples, armpits, belly button and ripple of abdominal flesh.

Leonard wasn’t surprised that Jim’d gone commando, but that had never been a source of much titillation for him. He could appreciate it now, though, since it put Jim’s cock on display just that much quicker. Lots of men looked funny naked, no matter how attractive, and that was a fact-- Len had seen more than enough frontsides and backsides to make that plain. But Jim...Jim was another animal altogether. He had one of the prettiest cocks Leonard had ever seen.

A little shorter than Len’s, but well above average. Full and broad. Purplish at the cut head, running to deep rose at the root. A slight upward curve that meant Len would have to be in a sixty-nine position to swallow it to the base as Jim fucked his throat. Heavy balls, lightly coated with tightly curled dark hair.

Jim, that sonofabitch, took a note from Len’s example, and mirrored his previous movement. Index finger to wet head, to mouth where it traced like lipstick, and Christ, God and fuck he wanted to taste Jim’s lips, get the flavor of him there.

Jim’s face, between his palms as his taste buds searched for sweet and musk. Finding it from one side of his upper lip to the other as the smooth side of his tongue probed, finding it with the tip as it investigated the philtrum, then cheek, licking up to temple, his ear.

He came closer, body connecting, connected, striking sparks, filament lighting-- first head to head, then root to root and chest to chest. Len was slightly taller, but not by enough to make a difference in the way their cocks pressed between them, rubbing into hips made slick with leaking fluids.

Jim’s arms were around him, hands scuttling down his nobbled spine, past the lumbar region to dip into dimples before his fingers spread to sample the firmness of his ass. He flexed his glutes involuntarily, letting out a moan as the fingers bit in, then smoothed to the crease at the thigh to heft up, pulling Leonard in harder, more.

“Sensitive ass?”

Len’s head fell back as Jim squeezed again, this time with a bit of nail. “Oh. Yeah.”

“Okay.” Jim’s face fell forward into Len’s shoulder. He was panting in a gratifying way. “Okay. We.” Jim took a stuttered little breath, then tried again. “We have to fuck. Like, right now, Bones.”

Leonard laughed, even though it came out sounding a little pained. "Jim..."

"Three years, Bones. We've talked enough."

"I was just about to agree with you is all."

"Oh." Another stutter as he brought his head up. “Oh.”

“Yeah.” Leonard tried, but he couldn’t keep the smug out of his voice. “Oh.” He pushed Jim yet again, but this time Jim’s legs were against the bed, and he fell back, bouncing against the mattress. The shell-shocked look didn’t last for long, though, and he scooted back, spreading eager legs at the same time.

Len looked his fill for a moment, letting Jim experience the weight of his regard as it traveled over his body, ending at the crease of his smooth ass.

“You want it bad,” Len stated. It wasn’t a question.

“God, yes.”

“So bad, I bet there won’t be much resistance, will there?”

“Bones.” And Jim was almost blushing, which just about made Leonard lose his damn mind. Jim’s hand reached for his own cock, but Len didn’t want that yet.

Slow. Easy.

Slow. Easy.  Like a mantra because he was going to need the concentration or he was going to explode.

He was still looking, but walked to the bedside table to open the drawer by feel, grabbing the bottle inside using the same method. “No resistance. I’m just going to slide into you like butter, ain’t I?”

“Please.”

“Please, what, Jimmy?”

Leonard hit the bed on his knees between Jim’s spread thighs, bottle of lube dropped between them. His palms were next, lying heavily on the insides of Jim’s knees, pressing him wider.

“You can’t...”

“Can’t what? Talk dirty to you?” Leonard smiled, and he knew it was an evil smile, but he didn’t feel like repressing it. “You like it.”

“It’s going to make me come!”  Jim’s voice was wrecked, his face pink and pebbled with sweat, neck tendons straining in a way that went straight to Len’s cock, because his words were doing that to Jim. Just speaking, and Jim was on the verge.

“Not my voice.” And that was his cue. He grabbed the warm velour of Jim’s dick tightly. A firm stroke up, gripping at the rim of the head before completing the round-trip back to the base.

“Fu--”

He bent, pressing nose to soft skin pulled taut over coursing blood. The smell, all Jim, but deeper, more animal and anima than anywhere else he’d found. Temptation too great and his taste buds exploded with too much input to catalog. Memory tied to taste. Creating new ground to return to, but also a deja-vu of every good visceral feeling of being alive.

Goddamn joy.

He lipped there, wet and messy and wonderful, enjoying the fine grain of satin against the interior of his mouth and the needy sound clawing its way out of Jim’s throat. Lipping, then licking down, letting himself be pulled. Tongue pointed to trace a thin line, dividing balls, hitting perineum. Down, down, moistening the crease of Jim’s ass, which clenched and released like an engraved invitation.

Jim wasn’t talking. Was looking-- Len could feel it, scalp tingling with the weight of his gaze as he licked. Speared muscle. Pursing his lips around Jim’s hole before sucking.

Jim howled, so he did it again and again, to hear that noise again, that and the begging that followed. Jim’s thighs were shaking under Leonard’s hands, which were shaking too.  

“Please!” Jim whimpered. And what a difference context made, because he’d have teased Jim something fierce if Len hadn’t been the one to torture that sound out of him.

Leonard rose up over Jim on one hand, getting close and slicking his fingers with lube. He slid those digits over that pretty, pretty cock before dropping down, tapping lightly, once, twice-- enjoying the way Jim jumped. He didn’t give Jim any other warning before spearing him on two fingers, deep, deep.

Jim’s upper body seemed to sigh and collapse, even as his hips bucked forward with searching greed.

“Like it?”

Jim didn’t answer with his mouth, but with a clench of his ass around Len’s fingers. “More.” His voice was wrecked, and it wrecked Len to hear it.

“Like this, more?” He added a third finger, just to tease. He knew Jim didn’t need this kind of prep, somehow knew that Jim was the type that liked a bit of burn. But he looked so good writhing, felt so good melting like wax against the pads of Len’s fingers--  Len couldn’t hurry this.

“Nnnnn--”

“Like my cock, more?” A hard shove of his hand, biting deeper, truer. Prostate lighting up, plasma bright and blinding. “God, you look so good like this.”

Jim. So pliant beneath him as Len stretched him. “You’re gonna be raw and red, Jimmy. And I’ll remind you of it. Touch your puffy, sensitive ass to remind you, so I can see your face and remember this...really feel it, every damn hour till it heals on its own. So, so good.”

Jim...really liked the voice, as low and sinful as Leonard could manage. Len could tell, because he turned redder, writhed more. “Touch it. Caress it. Everywhere. Then fuck it again, just to show you’re mi--”

Fuck.

Double fuck.

He was an idiot.

Leonard backed away enough to put some air between them. Slowed his fingers, even as Jim tried to get more inside him. Pulled out completely.

“Bones, c’mon!”

“Jim.”

“Fuck me.”

“Jim.” This time Leonard got his attention.

Jim looked at him, still breathing hard, still wanting, but quizzical. His what-the-fuck loud and clear despite no words being spoken.

“We’re doing this all wrong.”

“The hell?--”

“This is--”

“Fucking intense!”

“Hush.” Leonard placed the fingers that had been up Jim’s ass against Jim’s lips, which was a bad idea, because Jim knew where those fingers had been, and his eyes darkened to midnight as he snaked his tongue out. Made Leonard want to bury himself between those pale, perfect thighs and rut until they both came hard.

“I said I don’t own you. I don’t tell you what to do.” Leonard laughed at himself. “And then I go and try the opposite.”

Rolled eyes did the talking since Jim’s lips were still covered, but Leonard got the gist of the argument.

“I’m not saying I won’t top. Just that...I won’t top tonight.” He couldn’t miss the way Jim’s whole body stilled, or the way Jim shook off the finger keeping him silent like a grade-schooler.

“What?” Wary of jumping to conclusions, but there was a banked flame there that said he’d calculated two plus two equaling...

“I want you to fuck me.” Banked flame burst to life. There was no way Jim could deny wanting it. “I’ve spent so much time taking care of others, that...maybe I should let you take care of me, instead.”

Jim reached out. Leonard thought he was going to grab him, but the unsteady hand reached for his face instead, caressing his jaw. Jim looked pained, but it wasn’t alarming. It was vulnerable, and soft. Underbelly bared in trust. It pained Leonard too, an empathetic hurt.

Had he ever truly seen Jim until now?

Their faces got closer, but Len couldn’t tell who moved. Then they were meeting in a kiss, and this felt different. Less frantic. Coming from a deep, clean well.

There’d been so much bad, wounds so old there was no memory of their absence. But the violent purge had shaken something loose, to be rinsed away like venom.

Stray traces falling away. Both of them reinvented.

God.

They didn’t need to speak, no matter how revved up Jim got over the sound of Len’s voice, filthy and hot in his ear. Leonard slowly fell to his side, facing Jim. The kiss broke, but he couldn’t look away from Jim’s eyes. Jim stared back, fierce but quiescent as Leonard took one of Jim’s hands, slicked it with lube. Jim took over after a moment, rubbed his fingers to warm the liquid before he reached out to trace behind Len’s balls, to coax his legs open.

Fingers tested against the density of compact muscle. The first went in easy, swallowed by muscle to the very end in one long slide. Len laughed, but it was part of them, Jim laughing too because Len was the one with no resistance this time, parting like butter under finger, then fingers. Two. Then stretched wide over three, skimming over his prostate with a delicate touch, a dragonfly skimming water.

More laughter, as they fumbled together for more lube, messily squirted into hands, spread too cool over heated cock. This was them-- is them. More so now than they were before. Laughing. No performance, nothing artificial between Jim and Bones.

And he is Bones, he realized, as Jim prodded him over to his other side, long body pressed against his back. Jim named him, that day. Named him...and owned him, he would admit in some small, secret place that probably wasn’t much secret. More Bones than he ever was a Leonard.

Not that he’d tell Jim that. Not right now, at least. He’d keep that one in reserve for the future.

His leg raised, cheeks parted as Jim rose up on one arm so that he could see Len’s face. Cock burrowing into the crease, kissing the pucker of flesh with every nudge, Jim smoothed a soothing hand over Len’s chest as there was pressure. Pressure. Then a fullness pushing past the ring, shy of too tight, and he was engulfing, engulfed, and the taking-- inexorable. Pleasure, relentlessly filling him, penetrating deeper until there is nowhere left Jim wasn’t touching.

He was in, completely.

They both took a breath to calm, too sensitized. Filled with rightness.  

Jim was still looking at him, and he was carding Len’s hair, smoothing the sweat from his temples back into the already damp strands.

“Hi.” Jim grinned down, eyes crinkling.

Len tried to twist a bit more, to get a better look, but Jim just shook his head and pulled back a tiny bit before thrusting to the hilt. Len gasped, and there was barely air for breathing, let alone talking, but he somehow managed. “Hi, yourself.”

The look on Jim’s face became sillier, happier, and he leaned down to give Len a chaste mwah of a peck on the cheek, which was fucking hilarious, considering Jim had his dick shoved up his ass.

“Infant.”

“Makes you a pedo, don’t it?” He punctuated with another quick thrust.

“Guh.” He could feel his eyes roll back, and just like that, it was serious.  Not that it hadn’t been.  Always.

“Jim.” He could hear the strain in his own voice.

“Yeah? Good?” Another short thrust that wasn’t anything like enough friction. He’d like to ask for more, but this was Jim’s show.

It was Jim’s show. A few minutes of those staccato bursts--one inch, two, pull back, thrust--that gradually deepened, gradually quickened and intensified. Quicksilver against his back. A rhythm he’d probably be able to parse if he had a brain left in his skull.

Sweat and the burn of flesh against his back, and Jim was so hard against him, hard inside him, pulsing full and swollen and the slight sting of ass, groin,  just that perfect acidic tang in his mouth, licking a battery. Sucking on the phosphorous tart of a live wire.  

He was in the moment, caught in a time distortion because there was no beginning and no end, just what was being done to him. With him. Taken and taken-- the immediacy of Jim’s cock impossible to think around. The thickness of their combined musk heavy in the air.

His leg-- raised higher. He knew because it was suddenly more. Fuller. Everything. Legs-- smooth muscle and tendon snaked all around-- a hard, impatient palm pulling him closer, firmer, harder, fuck.

Dick so deep they were welded together.

He was close. So close. And Jim was close too, he could feel the swell of incipient orgasm. Fast and fierce as they met with the slap of skin on skin. Moans with greater amplitude. Event horizon about to be shattered.

“Bones--” Jim’s desperate voice biting off his name was better than a hand stroking his cock. A dozen tongues.

Serenade. Seraphim.  

It was too much. Too much, and Leonard strained upwards, trying to get at Jim’s voice, his mouth. Jim reached for that kiss as well, but Leonard came apart before they could meet, vision turning to glitter, cried out into the aborted kiss as something profound and aching was torn away from him, starting in his chest and touching everything else as it radiated outward like a birthing sun.

“Bones!”

Jim was there with him, shaking, mewling into Len’s neck as he emptied himself with erratic jerks of hip.

Coming and coming and coming. Spending.

Spent.

Bodies went slack. Room becomes silent but for harsh breathing.

They lay like that for a long time, time marked not by minutes, but in small happenings. Breaths evening. Cock softening and slipping free. Hands moving again to pull close, to pet. Jim, holding him tight.

Life had a few perfect moments that could never be taken away or sullied. Len had thought he’d experienced them all. Acceptance to med school. Joce taking his ring. The birth of his daughter. It was beautiful that he could still be surprised, wasn’t as jaded as he’d thought, because Jim had given him another one. The sex had been phenomenal, but it was this, the soft aftermath, that he would always remember.

“Mmm. Amazing. You’re amazing,” Jim whispered. There was awe in Jim’s voice, humbling and almost crippling. “Don’t know what I did to deserve you.”

Jim meant it, but Len couldn’t understand. "You deserve everything." He turned in Jim’s arms so they’re face to face, so Jim can see how much he meant it.

"But you..." Jim’s forehead was against his as Jim breathed, smelling him like he could take Leonard into his body. “So much.”

Len knew what he was trying to say, even though his brain didn’t feel like it was working at full capacity yet. "Jim. I haven't done anything for you that you couldn't have done yourself. You did it all yourself.”

“Not all.”

“All of it.” He meant it. Every last word of it. “You told me about Pike's recruitment speech, but that doesn't make a shit. Heavy-handed dare that even a five year old could see through, and you expect me to believe that's why you joined? You saw a chance and you took it. And you kept taking it, even when it was rough. You did it. Not Pike, not me. We were just along for the ride."

“I don’t believe that.” He’d seen Jim, the real Jim, before--on the ship. It had been similar to this, as emotionally naked. That Jim had been raw and bare bones, had met him with truth for truth, just like this. But this Jim was better. What Jim had now--fuck whatever the goddamn admiralty decided (Len would kill ‘em all, see if he didn’t)--was the only thing he’d ever really needed.

Hope was a beautiful thing. Jim could say what he wanted about belief, because Len didn’t buy it for a second.

“Well, I do, and I’ll keep saying it till you do, too.” He thumped Jim in the head before snuggling down.

“Ow!”

“Now shut up. You’re ruining my afterglow.”

Jim laughed, and snuggled down too, even though his grip remained tight. Possessive. Call Len a romantic, but he couldn’t help the way his throat thickened. One day, maybe he’d tell Jim what a big, fat liar he’d saddled himself with. Because he’d lied about ownership. Jim owned every particle of Bones McCoy, and that was the way Len liked it.

Must be crazy.

“You’re a real Sir Galahad.” Jim’s voice was wry.

“That the best you can do? Nothing pithier, quote-boy?”

“There is one. Been thinking about it a lot.” Jim buried his head in the pillow, hiding. “It’s from Rouchefoucald. I...maybe I’ll tell you. One day. But not...”

“Whatever you want. Whenever you want.”

“Bones.” Another soft laugh, but there was a little desperation in it. “I...I...”

Leonard took pity on him.

“I know, Jim. I know.” He stroked Jim’s head, tucked into his shoulder, feeling something dangerously close to equilibrium. “Me too. Just...remember that when I’m being a real asshole.”

And when Jim was quietly shaking and sobbing into the flesh of his neck, Len pretended to believe him when Jim said it was just the cold, and hugged him close.

 

 _  
**  
**   
_

_  
**Love, like ghosts, is often spoken of, but rarely seen. ~ Rouchefoucald** _

 

 

 

Reviews are much loved... _ **  
**_


End file.
